Nightmares Past
by randomsomeone
Summary: The offer she's been given is one he'd never let her accept--but rejecting it won't be easy. They build their way out on what remains of her past dreams and his past nightmares. GaaSaku
1. Traps

Naruto is not mine and I make no money from these works. Alternate reality fic, post-time jump spoilers, rated high for safety & how it periodically edges towards horror. I'm experimenting with limited omniscient POV, minimalism, and controlled (ie, no more of these 20+pages) chapter sizes.

For some reason, I can write original fic if I get this out of the way as well. I don't ask, I just make stuff. Here's to me getting everything finished soon.

**ooo**

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****ooo**

It was supposed to be a quiet thing, done before too many people could ask questions. Leaf's council of elders decided the Uchiha bloodline must continue. The last Uchiha—the deserter, Sasuke, with his Sharingan sealed away and his ego masked with formal humility—agreed, but on the condition that he pick his mate.

The hitch came with her.

Sakura sat in her room, her hands clasped tightly in her lap, Sasuke kneeling before her but still feet away. "It always would have been you," he said.

"No one else will stand me," she heard.

"You have no bloodline abilities, so nothing will clash with the Sharingan's development. You'd pass nothing unexpected on to the children."

"You're not special," she heard.

"And this will be good for you too," he told her. "You won't have to go out on missions; you'll be kept safe."

"You shall be kept in a pretty little cage," she heard. "You are incapable of running and fighting and deciding on your own."

"Leaf wants to keep my bloodline alive. They think that maybe"—and here he sneered, just a little—"if I go with someone completely outside of the family line, our children will gain some stability."

"Everything you are is meaningless. Put everything you may have hoped for and wanted for yourself aside," she heard. "The village needs your body."

She told him she'd have to think about it, knowing he'd take that as assent.

Tsunade found her half an hour later, walking stiffly, mindlessly, her eyes open and unseeing.

The Fifth knew her student as well as she knew the expressions of the walking wounded. Tsunade couldn't so easily put words to her own unease; and so, when Sakura turned to her, hurt and bewildered and utterly unsure of what to do, the Fifth Hokage gave her another option. She had the mission papers in her hand then; she realized she'd been hoping for this reaction even before she offered them. She'd tell Sasuke that Sakura was needed specifically as one of Leaf's elite . . . and even if he doubted her, he'd long ago forfeited his rights to complain.

The Fifth tried to conceal her own worry; Sakura tried to conceal how much the chance to leave the country meant to her. With time and distance as a buffer, perhaps she could more easily see her best course of action.

She was packed, had met her team, and was out of Leaf's gates and on the road to Sand within an hour.

**ooo**

Temari knew something was wrong within seconds of seeing her. Time and distance hadn't helped; Sakura had eaten because she knew she had to, had tried to sleep but barely succeeded. The smile put on for her friends at Sand was wan and worn. For the pink-haired kunoichi, years of loyalty to Leaf and of wanting what she'd been offered pressed her forward; years of hard-gained self-respect made her want to spit in the faces of everyone who'd even suggest it to her. Three days' run had only served to make her more frustrated.

Temari made note of Sakura's state, asked just enough questions to be sure no one was dying or worse, and finally invited her to dinner with her brothers. Sakura balked—in part because her appetite was still gone and in part because she sensed the closing jaws of yet another trap—but Temari was persistent, and in the end she acquiesced.

Sakura's instincts, of course, had been dead on.

The three Sand siblings had worked as a team for years. Their favorite system was a simple one, a deadly three-man relay played so many times that it'd almost become second nature. The technique's setup was executed by the older siblings: Temari would bait a subject, either flushing them out from cover, drawing them into conversation, or dragging them to dinner.

It's been so long, she told the Leaf medic, and they hadn't seen anyone they knew from Leaf for _ages,_ and Gaara only got to talk to Tsunade every so often via messenger bird and never about anything _good_—

Gaara sat at the end of their little rectangular table, his hands in his lap and face fixed in a bland expression of polite interest.

Everyone was still doing all right, Sakura told them, and Temari and Kankurou exchanged glances from across the table's center. "Except . . ." And she hesitated, and the trap torqued back into motion.

From there, Kankurou would lead the subject along, with coaxing or taunting or joking; whatever was necessary. He and Temari could weave a web of words or weapons so skillfully that people would walk into their trap, practically maneuvering themselves to wherever the Sand siblings wanted.

He sat down across from her and openly postulated about suicide missions, about her being sent to secretly take over Sand, about ridiculous and deadly reasons alike for Sakura to be so downtrodden. She smiled and shook her head and said it was nothing so dramatic, just that . . .

Temari and Kankurou went quiet and watched her intently, leaning on her fragile mental state and willing her to talk with the sheer force of their personalities. Sakura knew that on another day she'd face them both down . . . but here was an opportunity, an opening, a place to let out her worries and see if these three—three of the hardest shinobi she'd ever met—would find them laughable.

And so, of her own volition, she walked to the heart of the trap. It wasn't so bad a thing, after all. She supposed. Maybe. She'd be married, work within Leaf when she could, would have access to pretty much whatever she wanted . . .

As Sakura's words kept coming and the plan she was talking about became clear, Temari and Kankurou paled. But by this point she was looking down at the lacquered tabletop in front of her, speaking almost to convince herself.

It was for the good of Leaf, she said. They couldn't let one of Leaf's oldest bloodlines die, after all. Not after everything they'd gone through and everyone who'd been lost to get it back. And . . . well, no, she didn't know how Sasuke would treat her. But she'd get some sort of affection, right? And if her duty meant she should be with him, be the one to bear the new line of—

"_**No," **_snapped Gaara. Sakura jerked upright and to awareness, realizing far too late that she'd made it to the trap's heart—where Gaara waited, white-lipped and shaking. She stared, open-mouthed—every impression she'd ever gotten that his calm was merely a mask came back to her, as the mask's corner lifted just a little and a feral beast snarled back.

Kankurou found words first. "They want you to be a broodmare."

"It's not like that," Sakura protested, her voice coming far too shrill. "It's that—"

She couldn't look away from Gaara, who stared at her as though he'd just seen a nightmare come to life—and as though he intended to kill it with his bare hands.

Temari waited until sure Sakura wouldn't finish her sentence, then came in from another angle. "Sakura . . . when's my birthday?"

Sakura blinked at her, confused, so Temari filled in the blank. "August twenty-third. When's Kankurou's?"

Her mouth moved but nothing came out. Kankurou supplied the date for her: "May fifteenth."

They watched Sakura do the math, then started to shake her head. "But that shouldn't . . . there's supposed to be time for recovery between pregnancies, for the health of . . ."

Temari came in for the terrible finale. "And Gaara's?"

"Just before mine," Sakura finally said. "In the middle of . . . January . . ." She jolted, horrified. "But that can't—"

Gaara continued to stare, wild-eyed, sand creeping agitatedly around him and his hands clenched to white-knuckled fists.

Temari nodded solemnly. "Eight and a half months between my birth and Kankurou's. And Gaara was two months premature." Her upper lip curled. "Our father was on a tight schedule."

"But—" Sakura came to her feet, her hands to her chest in a gesture that could be defensive or pleading. "But Leaf's not like that. But they'd never—"

"Do you want to bet your life on it?" Kankurou asked.

"Tell us how caring the Uchiha is," Temari followed.

"I . . ." Sakura started—then cracked, and began to cry. "I . . . I can't. I— I don't know what to do, I just . . ." She sank to her knees, shaking her head and covering her face with her hands.

"Gaara," Kankurou said softly. "Do we officially need to request political asylum for her? Or will this do?"

Gaara closed his eyes and took a deep breath, forcing his hands to relax, willing the sand to calmness, pushing his rage aside and cutting his response down to three harsh words. "This will do."


	2. Caged

Of course, there's times when it's better to wallow than minimize.

**

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**

He would not let it happen again.

Kankurou went to take care of some other business. Temari took Sakura off to her quarters. Both of his siblings moved with the controlled, anticipatory wariness of shinobi preparing to face an old foe. But Gaara . . . Gaara paced the halls, seething.

And he'd tried so hard to put every bit of his past behind him. He'd started anew; he'd fought for the loyalty of his shinobi and, to a better degree than he sometimes felt he deserved, he'd gained it.

And she turned up, the medic who'd once reminded him so much of Yashamaru . . . being pushed into the same situation that'd resulted in his mother's death, his possession by Shukaku, his father's hatred and a staggering number of murders at his hand.

He'd only offered asylum. He'd left Sakura with the choice to make—and though he knew letting her make the choice was the right and rational thing to do, the chance that she'd choose to go back to Leaf and her impending betrothal made him want to lock her away and scream at the doorway to her prison until his throat was raw.

It would not happen again. He wouldn't stand for it. He couldn't see her at Leaf in two years' time, weary and drawn and dying on her feet as the person who'd vowed to honor and protect her instead tried to build a legacy from her flesh and blood and suffering.

With someone else he might have been able to turn a blind eye, to forcibly pretend any tales of the Uchiha's marriage were simply rumor. But damn it, he _knew_ her.

A familiar pressure built across his shoulders, squeezed his temples. Gaara made a point of walking as calmly as possible to the training grounds; he checked to be sure he picked one empty of any other human life.

Then he destroyed it as violently as a snow globe hurled onto stones.

Sandy claws tore up boulders and threw them; small cyclones whipped to life and were dashed against the desert floor. He forced the ground into a great yawning whirlpool, pushing until the earth itself groaned like it was dying.

Not again. Not again._ Not again._

Far underground lay bedrock. Gaara reached, straining, dragging a slab the size of a building to the surface. It'd been far enough down to glisten damply in the sunlight. He glared and drove sand against it like hundreds of sledgehammers, seeking weakness in the stone, then shattering it.

Pitting his strength against inanimate objects let him not think of the tales of madness and misery and death amongst women who'd found themselves only valued for their bloodlined progeny, let him not think of his father's strangely distant expression in a surviving wedding picture, let him not think of the fogged years where he'd called his sand his mother and together they'd ripped through anyone who'd gotten in his way.

This violence was bloodless and purgative and not at all what he really wanted—but it kept his city safe.

Destroying the training ground wasn't as satisfying as destroying an enemy. It never was. Gaara sat on his haunches in the midst of newly-created sand dunes, hands resting loosely on his knees, his breathing slow and deliberate.

Throwing a tantrum would not help anything, he told himself. He could always tell himself that—after the fact. But at least now his mind would be clear, and he could try to face this problem with methods his station and his publicized level of sanity would allow.


	3. Anachronistic and Impulsive

…

* * *

Sakura curled up on the futon in Temari's guest room, exhausted from her trip and her endless internal debates. Temari'd assured her that she could stay there until she felt better able to decide what she wanted. Her stay didn't _have_ to be something as dramatic as political asylum—at least, not if breathing room would do.

Temari hadn't told her how nothing escaped the Sand siblings' trap once Gaara got a hold of it. She didn't believe Sakura needed to hear that.

So Sakura waited, concentrating on her breathing rather than the threat of a loveless marriage for the sake of breeding, the possibility of a string of too-close pregnancies in order to better preserve the Uchiha line, or the likelihood that Leaf's authority figures would spend all their waking moments pressuring her to accept Sasuke's offer. She tossed and turned, finally dozing off—and slept for less than three hours before the nightmares caught up with her.

She dreamed of herself, there; empty-eyed and wandering the streets of Sand, one hand on her gravid belly, knowing that what she carried would soon kill her. Knowing that she was being shadowed by her husband's hired shinobi; that they would appear and stop her should she try to do anything,_ anything_ to change her situation. Knowing that she fed her own hate and fear and desperation into her unborn child, and that their influx via her bloodstream would alter it forever.

In her dream, she knew the baby already, knew his face, his eyes, his red hair and strangely unblemished forehead. She looked and saw and knew the mark would come. And the promised result of her own inability to deny her husband, to deny Sand's leaders' talk of the greater good, and even to deny this pregnancy . . . would be a little unloved child who would go on to tattoo himself with that which he craved most—and then unleash hell upon everyone who would deny him this craving.

Sakura woke suddenly, sweat-damp clothing clinging to her skin, her heartbeat pounding in her throat—and rather than brave a return to her dreams, opened a window to brave the desert night's chill instead.

She found Gaara waiting there, standing on a rooftop's corner, close enough to watch her building yet far enough away that it seemed unobtrusive. She found herself unsurprised . . . then grateful.

Gaara said nothing when she approached him; he didn't offer an explanation for his proximity or let her know the number of times his nocturnal travels had led him in circles around her building. He only offered a shoulder, for when her worries and fears caught up with her and she started to tremble. He didn't know how she felt; he couldn't begin to understand. But he could be there, be strong, be her shield—and if later she chose to talk, he could listen. This, at least, was something he knew how to do.

If she left his shoulder damp, he said nothing; nor would he.

As time wore on and she found herself against him for the warmth as much as the support, Sakura pulled herself from the endless circle of "But if I, but if I, but if I—" to look more closely at her company. She could tell him everything—or apologize profusely for taking up his watch by crying all over him. But she froze up, worried and ashamed; she didn't know him that well . . .

"It'll be okay," he told her, his first words of the evening. And strengthened by his confidence, she let herself relax and her mind go blank.

_Everything_ would prove a colossal order, one she doubted Sand as a whole could fill—but for now, this was what she needed: someone to hold her and tell her things would be all right.

Gaara found relief in her tears, though, and breathing room with her hands gripping his clothing and her cheek against his shoulder. A woman that upset about a choice to be made wouldn't choose lightly, one with this many worries _had_ to recognize the wrongness of her situation, and one who'd seen the consequences of this type of union couldn't possibly want to enter it herself. He'd reviewed her mission papers; she'd have two more days to decide before her team returned to Leaf. He had two days, then, to find a way to convince her away from her childhood dream and what might or might not be a truncated life of anguish.

He'd done more impossible things, at least.


	4. Unjust

We'll see how even the updates stay once convention season really kicks in. In the meantime, the original work stalled out again when the characters decided to paint a bathroom. Bah.

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**

"She knew carrying him would kill her," Temari said. "Our father chose to help her along."

Temari'd woken Sakura from an uneasy mid-afternoon nap in an empty hospital room and offered to buy her lunch. Their time together, she figured, was as good a point as any to broach the subject of the siblings' family life.

Sakura might still be deciding between the threat of a possible terrible future and the relationship she'd craved for years, but Temari—who had only the most fleeting memories of her own mother—had already made her decision.

She led Sakura to see Gaara again, knowing her youngest brother was an exclamation point for her not-so-subtle argument. Today the redhead had taken up with a team of builders; together, Temari and Sakura watched him help test foundations, lift stone blocks with sand, and steady walls. Easily half the workers there were head and shoulders taller than him.

"You said your father hated him for being out of control," Sakura said. "Do you think he'd be proud of him if he saw him now?"

"I think our father would be amazed to know Gaara wasn't killing people."

A few of the workers were around him, pointing to diagrams, smiling at their newest helper. The watching kunoichi both knew this would be the fastest and safest build they'd probably ever have.

"In a way," Temari said thoughtfully, "he saved another woman, somewhere. With all the trouble he caused, our father never got around to finding another wife."

It was a terrible thing to say, and they both knew it.

"He seems to have . . . _adjusted_ fairly well, at least?" Sakura finally offered.

Temari shook her head. "Outwardly."

There were rumors that he was the one responsible for the deaths of however many condemned prisoners, but no one could prove those either way. There were also rumors Temari knew were true, that occasionally he would lock himself in his quarters and not come out until he could do so without being a risk to those around him. But as long as Gaara remained aware of his limits—and careful enough to clean up his messes—she wouldn't mind.

She sighed. "He's still damaged. He hides it well, and he's exceptional when it comes to his duties, but with everything he's been through it'd be stupid to expect him to just . . . dust himself off and be okay. I think it'd be more than a little unfair for us to expect that of him."

Sakura had no response. They watched until the walls were a sufficient height and the crew broke for lunch as well. As Gaara turned to leave, a kunoichi around Sakura's age approached him, saying something they couldn't hear. He walked away as if she didn't exist. Sakura winced, ashamed for the girl even as she recognized an echo of her own behavior. She hated to think she'd ever acted that way towards Sasuke.

"Yeah," Temari said, seeing her flinch and misinterpreting the reasons. "He still hasn't really shown interest in girls, either."

"Is it just these ones? Or . . ."

Temari hesitated, then let it all out. "I don't know. I know he's talked to a few, spent time with some here and there, but he never seems interested in starting anything. Our medics said at one point that it might be a side effect of the possession technique, that he might even be sterile. No one really wanted the force the issue with him and he never cared enough to get tested." She shrugged. "If I decide I want to be an aunt, I can wait for Kankurou to settle down. Gaara . . . He can do his own thing. It'd be awful of me to push something like that on him."

She used the last sentences like nails, building a wall for Sakura to shield herself behind, building a platform on which the younger girl could stand strong. Temari watched the Leaf-nin's expression, searching for any hint of offense, any indication that she'd overstepped. None came.

He'd caught sight of them by that point, though, and it didn't seem right to have him be their topic of conversation when he was present. If Sakura seemed a little quieter, a little more reserved than usual, he didn't mention it.

He remembered her tears, her fear; she remembered him silent and solid—then his sudden rage from the previous afternoon. Temari considered her only memories of her own mother: an impression of weariness, a hand on Temari's shoulder, a rounded belly and Kankurou in her arms—and then screaming, medics rushing past, and Yashamaru carrying them away from the room where the Fourth Kazekage pinned his wife down and Chiyo began the sealing technique. She took a deep breath and sent a silent plea to whatever was listening that Sakura wouldn't make the same mistake.

**ooo**

Sakura made it almost four hours that night. This time the dream was of him, mid-transformation, from the fight in the woods six years before. Sand pinned her to the tree like it had in her nightmares for months after the actual event; slowly, he approached to finish her. But this time he leaned close, the knuckles of his clawed hand tenderly brushing against her cheek. "I can protect you," he rasped—

And she was awake, bolt upright and shuddering.

She started towards the window again, but hesitated. After that dream, she wasn't sure Gaara was the person she wanted to see.

But as she looked over the moon-paled rooftops he appeared, a dark spot on his corner from the previous night, low in a hunter's crouch. And she knew he'd been circling, waiting.

She watched him, dismayed—she wasn't sure she wanted this much attention from the siblings, wasn't sure how to handle Temari's faux-casual family stories, and definitely didn't want to feel like Gaara was stalking her. He watched her in return, stone-still, waiting for her to make the first move.

_I can protect you—_

"Sakura."

Temari stood in her doorway, her hair messed and down. Sakura blushed guiltily; she knew a ninja who'd spent any time in the field wouldn't sleep through someone wandering around nearby let alone having thrashing, panicky nightmares. "Sorry," she muttered sheepishly.

"Don't worry. Just take the door this time, 'kay? You let all the heat out last night."

It wasn't quite chasing her out, but it did the trick. Sakura grabbed her blanket along with her change of clothes—in the rush to leave Leaf, she hadn't packed for the cold of Sand's nights—nodded and held up a finger to the watcher outside (_Yes, one minute_) and headed out the bedroom door in search of a place to change.

Temari walked to the window after the Leaf-nin left, looking up to where Gaara watched. She wouldn't have thought Sakura would find comfort in the one who'd once tried to kill her; she wouldn't have thought Gaara would take quite so personal an interest in Sakura's state. She wasn't sure what to make of it.

She closed her eyes and inclined her head to him—_Take care of her_—and he nodded back. Then his attention was on the ground as Sakura made it outside, and he was gone.


	5. Effusion

**ooo**

She made sure to set the boundary as soon as he landed in front of her. "It's creepy if you're stalking me."

He paused, blinking, taken aback. "Then next time you can come find me."

Next time? Sakura wrapped her blanket around her shoulders uneasily. She wasn't sure she wanted to make a habit of this.

She didn't want to be a bother, she told him.

If he minded, he told her, he'd let her know. The open honesty of their conversation—however sharp-edged—was a comfort to both. And because they could be open, he asked her.

"Why are you still awake?"

_Nightmares of the future and past, _she thought. But how could she condense everything she was feeling to things as small and specific as words?

Unwittingly, he helped her. "I know you're afraid—"

"I'm _ashamed."_

She shifted towards the open street, he took a step, and they began walking. Motion helped the words come faster.

"It's that this is everything I ever wanted for myself. It's how I always planned my future—even when he was gone for years, even with every awful thing he did." She raised a clenched fist to her chest. "I knew he'd come back and get better and we'd be together, I _knew_ it. And now he's back, and he says he wants to be with me, and—and his reasons make me sick. It's like my fantasy came true . . . but there's no room for _me_ in it. Just for what everyone else wants. And what happened here scares the hell out of me—and I have no guarantee it won't happen to me, too. And instead of facing everyone who wants this to happen, instead of protecting myself, I ran away from them."

"Sometimes you need to make distance to protect yourself." Gaara thought of the people who'd shied away from him even before knowing what he was, and added, "And sometimes you know when something's wrong."

Instincts or no, it wasn't an outright threat to her life she'd run away from. That had to be part of it, she told him. She'd behaved like a coward.

There was nothing cowardly, he told her, in evading a trap.

"I don't know that it was a trap."

"I think part of you did—or at least recognized the danger."

She shook her head at the irony. "So I hide from one danger with . . ."

"You'll be safe here," he said, his voice chilly and hard.

_I can protect you—_

She shivered. He thought it was from the cold.

"It's not like that," she tried. "It's a different danger: immediate and to me, instead of . . . well, because you're good."

"Sometimes it works out in either direction," he told her, his hands held out like scales. "What makes me dangerous is what makes me good. What makes you good is what makes you dangerous."

"You think I'm dangerous?" she asked, sure he was making fun of her.

"We all can be."

She wasn't sure if he'd just ruffled her feathers or stroked her ego.

"Is that what you do when you don't sleep at night? Wander around and think a lot?"

He shrugged.

"Your thoughts on modifying your title to The Warrior/Philosopher Kazekage?"

"It's a mouthful." But he smiled to himself, relieved to catch a glimpse of the spirited kunoichi he'd known before.

Sakura also thought of their past, of the person he'd been—and of how very much he'd grown. The beginnings of legend were already building around him: He'd suffered unthinkably yet come out of madness in order to lead Sand; he'd fallen and died in Sand's defense, yet had come back, willing to die again to protect it. Sakura realized she'd been there to see all of it—including this facet. She wondered what that made her.

The night remained cool and quiet around them. Amidst his city's silence, Sakura touched his arm and told him she was proud of what he'd become. He looked up at her, actually _looked_ at her, in a way she knew Sand's younger kunoichi would kill to see—then closed his eyes, exhaled slowly, and whispered, "Thank you."


	6. Reactive

Okay, guys. I can do longer chapters or I can do regular updates. With short chapters I can keep up with myself and not have, y'know, three months between updates. (But I'm still not doing twenty-page chapters.) Let me know.

**ooo**

And as the night dragged on towards morning, and as Sakura began casting glances back towards her bed, he realized what he could do. He led her through the merchant district, all the while keeping track of how much time they had left.

It didn't feel quite real to her. They wandered instead of walking with purpose—slow, drifting, somnambulistic. She watched people shuffle around in the purplish light of pre-dawn—first one, then a few, then more, voices rising to call to each other, to them. Slowly, steadily, the city came to life around them, and Sakura understood why he'd want to be there.

Then the eastern wall was in front of them, and his sand lifted them to where the sentries waited.

"Watch," he said, and leaned his forearms against the worn stone. Curious, Sakura mimicked his posture.

Soon enough, she knew. She'd given him words; he gave her the sunrise.

At first, having not slept much for days and having spent too much time in and around a city, she couldn't figure out what was that far off in the desert. Then the glow grew, centered around a point on the horizon—then cracked, casting red and orange across the dizzying breadth of the sky and desert floor. Then finally, light, quickly growing warm and strong enough that she felt the skin on her face tightening.

"It's wonderful," she whispered. She didn't want her words to carry to anyone else around them; she wanted them to be for him alone.

"Yeah."

He watched her close her eyes and inhale deeply, and wondered if he'd be out of line to touch her as well. Instead he remained still beside her, both of them soaking up the morning's sunlight until the first ninja interrupted them with a list of morning reports.

It'd been enough, though. For the first time since she'd arrived, Sakura walked into Sand's hospital with a genuine smile on her face.

**ooo**

Kankurou'd heard within hours. The first night, Gaara'd practically snuck Sakura back into her room; this time he'd paraded her down the street in front of Sand's early risers. Speculation was beginning to stir—and it was Kankurou's unofficial job to deal with rumor.

He caught up with his little brother in the cotes for the messenger birds, where Gaara's red hair was a bright contrast to the grays and browns of feathers and cages. Gaara had a habit of feeding the raptors from his fingers—a habit that worried anyone who didn't know about his shields.

It functioned as a de-stressing and empathy-building exercise, they both knew—making this minor as far as Gaara's strange habits were concerned. But Kankurou wanted to know if Gaara needed the decompression because of Sakura, if the situation was proving unduly problematic.

"I like the birds," Gaara told him. The hawk whose cage he opened had a beak capable of mangling a careless person's hand; Gaara liked it best.

"The sentries said you gave Sakura the walking tour of Sand—around four in the morning. What's up with that?"

"I'm not sure yet." Gaara gave him a condensed description of the past nights' events, trusting his brother's social perceptiveness more than his own. Kankurou felt the weight of that trust; he'd earned every ounce of it and bore it with pride. Every so often his brother would slip and show that he still wore his understanding of humanity like a set of poorly-fitted clothing—but if he did it around Kankurou, Kankurou could guide him back on track.

"Is she talking to you as the Kazekage? Or as a peer with special insight?"

Gaara thought about it for a moment, then said, "Peer."

The hawk he'd been feeding stepped up onto his wrist, talons gripping lightly. He smiled and fed it another strip of meat.

"You know what people are going to start saying."

Gaara's nose wrinkled with distaste.

"It was bound to happen." Kankurou shrugged. "You don't really spend time with girls—so if you're seen spending time with one, people will start thinking you're together."

"Is that a good thing or a bad thing?"

"It's a _you_ thing. Gaara, you shouldn't start something just because you think—"

Gaara was smiling to himself, watching him out of the corners of his eyes. Kankurou cut off, then chuckled—Gaara wasn't above rattling him every so often. "You could do a lot worse."

The redhead looked up, perturbed. "You think so?"

Kankurou grinned toothily but didn't answer the question. After all, he was allowed to rattle his little brother as well. "Anything you want me to say out there?"

"Not yet." Not until he'd figured it out himself, Gaara thought.

Kankurou watched him. They'd had political refugees at Sand before—and to the best of his knowledge, Gaara'd only paid them the most cursory of attention.

"I haven't seen you act like this before," he said. "What's different here?"

A pause. "I know her, I suppose." Gaara began stroking the hawk carefully with the backs of his knuckles.

Kankurou leaned an elbow against a sink's edge. Gaara's answer had been simple enough, but didn't quite ring true.

"It's that this one's hitting awfully close to home, huh?"

The redhead's expression didn't shift, but the hawk on his arm startled, hissing, its beak open as if to bite. Kankurou watched as it shifted from foot to foot nervously, wings half-spread. Gaara waited, deathly still, until it calmed—then, just as carefully, resumed petting it.

He didn't answer his brother. He didn't have to.


	7. In Final Hours

**ooo**

Tonight the dream was of drowning, with her waking just enough each time to recognize it as a dream—then falling right back into it as soon as consciousness faded. Sakura finally struggled to alertness, sick to her stomach with worry and from lack of sleep.

The mission was supposed to hold them over for three nights, with the Leaf team leaving together on the next morning. She had less than six hours until she was supposed to leave with them.

Bread and a glass of water helped her stomach. Temari came into the kitchen to find her sitting on the counter in the dark, kicking her feet, unwilling to go back to bed.

Temari squeezed Sakura's shoulder and headed back to her own bed without a word. Sakura understood: tonight there'd be no push besides which she gave herself.

Well, she told herself, at least her indecision wouldn't be cutting into _his_ sleep.

She brought the blanket again; she jogged when the wind proved cutting as well as cold. It was silly, she told herself, to feel self-conscious letting herself into the building. It was silly to worry about who might've seen her or if Gaara would tire of her company.

Gaara hadn't expected her, but he'd hoped—and he'd left his door open. And just in case, he'd made preparations.

She knocked; he waved her in. As he rolled up the scrolls he'd been examining, he asked if they would be walking again.

The offer he'd given her was space other than the room's relational intimacy—but if she stayed in one place for very long she'd be tempted to go back to sleep. It wasn't just that sleeping or complaining of sleeplessness around him felt rude in relation to his obvious continued insomnia—it was that waking from a nightmare in front of him would be even more embarrassing than her waking Temari every night.

She had the sudden, insane impulse to see if he'd let her use him as a pillow and sleep that way, to see if his presence would frighten her bad dreams away. She shook it away just as quickly; yes, she said, walking would be nice.

"Here." He handed her a bundle of soft, heavy fabric: a wrap that would keep out the worst of the desert's night chill. "It should fit."

She shrugged into it, then paused, inhaling through her nose. "This is yours."

"We're almost the same size." The words were easier than explaining how Temari must think they would have the sense to stay inside—or how Sakura leaving his place in the early morning would create more rumors than Kankurou could possibly keep up with.

She couldn't resist; she held her arms out and did a little spin. "How do I look?"

He looked her over, then looked her in the eye. "Like you belong here."

**ooo**

They ended up wandering along the inside of Sand's perimeter wall, her carrying her blanket as if she actually intended to return to bed. Her fleeting remaining time let her think out loud around him, bounce her thoughts off him as a sounding board. "On one hand," she said, and raised the hand to hip level, "it's supposed to be my choice. On the other, I don't think I have very much of a choice at all. Leaf wants his bloodline, and he said he'd only give them children of his bloodline through me. I worry . . . that they'll try to push me into the marriage, no matter what I want." Then she sighed, flustered. "I don't know what I expect you to say, though. This kind of thing's nothing _you'd _ever have to worry about."

"No one would be stupid enough to try," he agreed.

"Maybe that's the thing," Sakura said, almost to herself. "I should just be more like you."

He thought about it, pale green eyes observing her curiously. Then: "That might work."

Sakura stared, trying to figure out if Gaara was making a staggering understatement or being hyperbolic to the point of his making a joke. Then the mental image struck her—her chasing Sasuke and elders and every other annoyance away from her with shouts of, "I'll kill you! _I'll kill you!"_—and she couldn't stop giggling.

A week ago, if someone had told her she'd soon find herself wandering around Sand at odd hours of the night as the Kazekage tried to talk her out of getting married to the guy she'd been in love with for years, she would've laughed at them.

She only had a few hours, though, and so many questions.

Because she could talk to him, because of the range of his life experience, it wasn't so strange an idea that he could somehow help her with her problems. "Did you ever have to do something that was . . . well, against your nature? Against everything your gut was telling you?"

Gaara considered. "When I decided to become Kazekage." He looked past her and at the still-dark horizon, remembering. "I had to fight a number of people, the ones who couldn't accept me—I had to fight them publicly, and not kill them, or else those who hated me would hate me more. I had to demonstrate control—even if everything in me wanted to let go of it." A pause, as he put words to his realization. "They were so desperate. I had to be stronger than them but still respect their lives as Sand's ninjas; afterwards, I had to convince them that we all had Sand's best interests in mind." He scowled. "Some needed to be convinced a few times. Some . . ."

She nodded. "Doing something just as a job doesn't tend to drive people nearly as hard or move people nearly as strongly as a cause they believe in."

"And when there's two believers on opposite sides of the battlefield . . ."

"Yeah," she agreed quietly, and tucked her arms under her wrap.

Curiosity bested stoicism, and he turned back to her. "Why do you ask me?"

"I . . . just needed to know that someone else understands."

Had he missed a verbal cue? Had she decided to return to Leaf after all? "I did it to become Kazekage, though," he said, sudden alarm straightening his spine.

"I know. You took what you knew and what you wanted—" she made a little box with her hands "—and you stepped completely beyond it in order to do what you had to. Which was what was best for Sand . . . _and_ what was best for you."

They walked a few more minutes, each lost in their own thoughts; she wondering if she was making the right decision, he wondering if she would fold and fall and start the entire terrible cycle over again. Finally, Sakura spoke.

"Gaara, do I have to leave with them today?"

"No," he replied—and both let out matched, minuscule sighs of relief.

She shook her head. "I don't want to be a coward—but I don't know what to say to them. At least, not yet. I just know I can't go back into that . . . _situation_ unprepared."

He thought of all the terrible things that could be done to a kunoichi to make her compliant; he thought of every threat and every angle of pressure and every technique that could strip a person's will away. Gaara had put years into imagining every scenario, wondering which ones could've been used on his mother—and which ones had finally pushed her to the point where it'd been easier to kill her than keep her manageable. But this time Sakura was the victim of these faceless ninjas' plans. This time the Uchiha played the part of his father, looking on as more than two straight years of pregnancy ground his wife to dust.

Sakura didn't have to go back at all, Gaara thought, but kept the sentiment to himself.

After a few more steps, she gave him a shy, experimental touch on the arm. "Are we going to watch the sunrise again this morning?"

"If you like."

They sat on the eastern wall, feet dangling, a dry wind messing their hair and making Sakura cling to her blanket. In silence, each was able to relax, just for a little while.

Once the sun's morning glow had gone from pale to red to orange to bright, harsh gold, Sakura turned back to him. "What will you tell Tsunade-sama?"

"I'll figure it out."

He dropped her off with Temari, went to his office, and sat down to write a letter that would hopefully not start a war with Leaf.


	8. The Human Cost

At Acen in Chicago this weekend. Huzzah, the Alley!

**ooo**

He sent his letter with the returning Leaf team as a bid for time. He told Sakura her status as one of Leaf's shinobi wouldn't be questioned or endangered, and that she would have as much time as she needed to come to her decision. She thanked him and didn't press for any more details.

They had three days until it'd arrive.

She offered to keep working at the hospital to cover her room and board, in order to not be a burden. When he asked the medics there about her—he was _observing,_ he told himself, not _stalking_—they told him what he already knew: that she was a hard worker, smart, good with patients and easy to get along with. So if she wanted to take a couple hours' nap in the middle of her shift, they didn't mind at all.

The team's return was a weight off her shoulders. Sakura wasn't sure if the lifted deadline helped her fall asleep easier that night . . . or if she was aided in part by how she folded Gaara's wrap into a square and used it as a pillow. She just knew she went to sleep that night with her lungs full of his scent, only to wake a few hours later without remembering any nightmares she might've had.

They refined their habits without conscious intent. She'd nap for a little while at the hospital, then sleep for a few more hours at Temari's before waking up on her own and heading out to find him. He always left his door open for her; together they wandered Sand until dawn, then sat to watch the sun come up.

Kankurou told the curious that Sakura was Gaara's friend. After all, he'd known her for years; plus she was friends with Naruto and had been integral to his rescue that time before. And if she hung around for a little while, she hung around for a little while—and Sand's hospital would be better for it.

And if, against all odds, Gaara managed to coax the gutsy medic back out of the frightened, confused young woman who'd arrived at Sand a week before . . .

Kankurou watched them one night: her going into Gaara's building, then the two emerging minutes later, already deep in conversation. He didn't want to speculate on where this closeness would lead, but couldn't keep himself from wondering.

Sakura told Gaara how Sasuke's proposal had turned her entire world on end, how her doubting his motives had led to her doubting him, Leaf, herself. If he would approach their union as a business proposition, what did that say about his feelings for her let alone his understanding of her? If Leaf would encourage this . . . _perversion_ of a relationship, what did that say about them? As for her: she'd always thought love was supposed to be all-accepting . . . but she was starting to feel there were some things, some people's wishes she shouldn't have to accept.

Gaara told her how the acceptance of his father's choices had left scars on all of his remaining family—not in a bid for sympathy, but to show her how far-ranging his father's actions had been. He told her how Temari had equated marriage with death and could only manage a long-distance relationship with a man who knew to handle her affection as delicately and carefully as a wild deer; how Kankurou seduced and left girl after girl in a hedonistic search for a connection even he couldn't define.

She told Gaara she might have to rethink going out to lunch with Kankurou, and he made a little whuffly noise that might have been a chuckle.

The sentries grew used to them; the early morning merchants greeted them with the ease of familiarity rather than the consideration of businesspersons. And after the second night where she woke without nightmares, Sakura started to wonder if she might have reached the point in sleep deprivation where she'd simply stopped dreaming.

They climbed rooftops, walked ledges. He told her about the first time one of his teams of genin didn't return. His sense of responsibility to Sand's residents had been new, and he found it first tested by the knowledge that he'd been the one to send them, still children, on a fatal mission.

He told her how Temari and Kankurou had covered for him on the days it'd taken him to hunt the perpetrators down. He told her how his siblings had tried to comfort him afterward, telling him he'd match teams to missions that much more carefully because of this loss. But it hadn't helped. He'd still made an error in judgment, and that team had died for it.

He'd learned to compartmentalize; he had to be able to send his shinobi, even his brother and sister, out on missions knowing they might die as well. But he _had_ learned—about the human cost, about the families and friends who would be hurt or otherwise affected if something should go wrong. He kept a picture of the three genin in his desk, as a reminder.

Sakura sat beside him, biting her lip, as he came to the point of his story: that maybe some of the people at Leaf had lost sight of the human cost. Because there was a point where a leader had to stop compartmentalizing and face the natures of the people they were directing, face the ugliest of possibilities.

She asked Gaara what kind of person he thought he would've been if he'd been born a few years later, if he'd grown up with a mother instead of a bijuu, a father who tried to guide and nurture him instead of targeting him with assassins.

He thought about it for so long she wondered if he'd forgotten the question; then, "Not me."

"Do you think you would still be Kazekage?"

You can be a good person without experiencing the worst life has to offer, he told her. You can be strong without having developed that strength for all the wrong reasons. He pointed to her as an example, and was amused by the hint of color that came to her cheeks.

Time's passage moved easily for them, flowed as smoothly as the wind-blown sand around their ankles, leaving them wondering where the night had gone as they greeted yet another morning.

She mentioned a technique she'd been developing for correcting impaired vision, one that'd reshape a disfigured or malformed eye, and they spent hours sketching and examining and picking over what might work versus what'd cause irreparable damage. Gaara's field of excellence wasn't exactly putting people back together, but he still knew enough about the human body to put her theory through its paces. He approved of her exactness and caution; she approved of how quickly he picked up on her explanations. By the time curious sentries came to see what they were up to, they had covered the eastern wall's walkway with diagrams drawn on equal parts paper and sand.

Gaara caught himself talking about finding her the space and subjects for long-term tests and studies that, if implemented, would keep her there for months—but if she noticed, she didn't argue against the idea.

Once she was at work he sat and replicated their notes from memory, down to every last detail. If she decided to leave, Sand would retain this bit of knowledge to work with. But he still rolled the scrolls up, wrapped them in oilcloth, and buried the bundle where it wouldn't be found—deep below the wall where they sat every morning. She'd trusted him with her idea in the same way she'd trusted his letter to her mentor wouldn't result in her being branded a deserter, and Gaara, ever-increasingly loath to let her down, wanted to feel her trust was well-placed.

**ooo**

Leaf's teams arrived home three days later without Sakura, but with a scroll addressed to the Hokage. Tsunade read it standing—then sat to read it again. "Here," she finally said, and handed it to Shizune. "Tell me if I should laugh or be offended."

Shizune arched an eyebrow but accepted the scroll.

_You've trained your student well. I can't help but wonder if she would be better suited to remain here than at Leaf. I will consider returning her if I feel your need for her there is greater than ours. You need not worry. I will keep her safe. I suspect you knew that when you sent her. _

The younger medic gave a low whistle. "He's an arrogant one, isn't he?"

Tsunade sighed. "He's exactly the kind of man he needs to be." The letter'd even put the blame for Sakura's absence squarely on his shoulders; that way, there could be no reprisals against Sakura for her reticence. As long as Gaara really was doing this at Sakura's behest (instead of holding her hostage), Tsunade could breathe a bit easier. "Though if he were any less subtle . . ."

"He needs to worry less about subtlety and more about politeness," Shizune glowered.

"Not in this case." His message was couched in doublespeak to keep Sakura safe, wrapped in antagonism to thinly mask his intentions. Any more open and everyone involved would be at risk.

Shizune glanced over the scroll again—then jerked as Tsunade's relative calmness registered. "Wait. You knew this would happen?"

"Suspected," Tsunade said in a low voice. Unfettered, the Uchiha could be anywhere.

"How?" pressed Shizune, and Tsuande turned to her, smiling bitterly.

"Because the Kazekage has never made a secret of his past, and because his brother and sister have been around enough that I've learned all their birthdays. And because I can count." Tsunade sighed again—in relief as much as anything else, however much she'd expected this end, or hoped for it—and then went to personally inform the last Uchiha that his nuptials were indefinitely postponed.


	9. Flights Of

**ooo**

Her reply arrived by messenger bird later that afternoon. Gaara locked his office door to read it; he'd cracked the seal on the scroll with his thumbnail before returning his desk.

_I was certain you would take care of my student; I am relieved to hear you do not intend to prove me wrong. Uchiha Sasuke was disappointed to learn that Sakura's return shall be delayed—but no one here will deny that a good medic is invaluable. _

_I do not feel her immediate return is imperative, though there are those here who may disagree. Please keep me updated on her status so I may know how best to answer their questions. _

He read it again, nodding to himself. Sasuke was upset; by omission, Tsunade was not. She'd also provided Gaara with some shelter from the supporters of Sasuke's marriage—as well as supplying him with another buffer of time.

Though he wasn't sure what he'd use the time for—except to steal Sakura away completely.

Gaara'd recognized his own possessive nature long ago. First it'd helped him function, as a reason to keep going in a world that feared and hated him . . . but in time it became a foe that could bring about his downfall. Once he'd even enjoyed being driven by it—a state culminating with a full-on psychotic break in his first chuunin exam, when he'd cared more about killing his chosen prey than about a stadium of potential victims.

He remembered only fragments of that day: killing, wanting to kill, being unable to kill Naruto . . . and vividly amidst that, Sakura, the brief flash of her image conflating with Yashamaru's until his first instinct the next time they met was to avoid her. And even though he'd remained territorial after Shukaku was stolen from him, he liked to think he'd learned to better control himself. With a little mental redirection, he'd decided, this weakness could become a strength. He'd picked up the gist of it from his father, with one of the only ways Sand could begin to control his actions.

_These are your brother and sister. They're __**yours.**__ If they are to stay yours, they need to be protected._

It hadn't always worked out as intended. He remembered pinning Temari to a wall once with sand and calmly, quietly telling her he was the only one with a right to kill her. He'd been nine years old. He wasn't sure that she'd ever truly forgiven him, and couldn't bring himself to ask her without turning over his own painful memories.

But the base theory remained sound.

Sand was his. No one else could have it. The people were his. No one else could hurt them—and they supported him, they appreciated him, they even seemed to _like_ him, so he would defend them with his life.

Leaf's kunoichi, though, was not his.

Yet.

But she could be.

Because if he brought her into Sand, she'd be one of his people. And if he counted her as one of Naruto's friends, she'd be doubly under his protection by association. And if the Uchiha wanted to use her in a way that so clearly echoed Gaara's past . . . it would surely be Gaara's obligation to change her fate.

It had been wrong. It _would_ be wrong. And it wouldn't change his own history—pretending it would was illogical, and so he wouldn't put the whimsy to words—but stopping the past's repetition would be the best way he could ever condemn his father's actions.

It was _his_ city, and she was currently a part of it.

Yet one of the things Gaara'd had to learn was how to cover for himself, to hide any of his vagaries or strange fantasies from the public lest they think he was losing his mind again. His response to Tsunade thus carefully avoided mentioning any of his slowly stirring, barely-recognized plans.

_We are in agreement, then. I would be interested to see the reasons some might have to hasten Sakura's return. Her presence here protects lives that would otherwise be lost or endangered; that is all they need to know. _


	10. Trepidations

**ooo**

_They say it shall strengthen our security and pave the road for our future_, came Tsunade's response. _They tell me her presence here is a vital part of her duty to Leaf. But I feel their reasons for Sakura's immediate return do not weigh more heavily than yours for retaining her services. _

The words were vague enough to be meaningless without context. Gaara took note here: he and Tsunade both knew what was going on, but Tsunade wouldn't put it on paper. There was shame in it, then, and secrecy.

Gaara scowled at the scroll for good measure and read on.

_Also, let me know if she has need of anything. You know she's important to me. I would like my student to be comfortable. _

Gaara's scowl deepened. This wasn't Tsunade asking if Sakura wanted a few more changes of clothes. The Hokage had all but spelled the question out: _What will it take for her to come back?_

She cared—and she wasn't the only person at Leaf who cared. And it'd be unfair of him to withhold this from Sakura, no matter that the offer may sway her decision.

Now it was his turn to want reassurance, someone to help him make the right choice.

He knew Sakura would be mid-shift at the hospital. Dragging her away from that would be silly and selfish. He stood outside of it anyway, watching the doors, watching the people coming and going.

If he misstepped too far in one direction here, she might choose to return to the same situation that'd killed his mother—but if he misstepped too far in the other, people would die. _His_ people would die. Sand had underestimated Leaf six years before and nearly been decimated. And while he would like to spar Naruto at some point, facing him under this circumstance wasn't remotely desirable.

He let himself into Temari's place. He went to the guest room without conscious intent; he sat on Sakura's bed and tried to think of a way to respond. He pulled her blanket up, wadded it into a ball, wrapped his arms around it, and hugged it to his stomach.

He found his wrap folded on her pillow; he wasn't sure if it reassured him or made him worry more.

Temari found him that way some time later, his back hunched and chin resting on his knuckles, his arms still folded over top of the blanket.

"I can't make the decision for her," he said.

"I don't think she'd want you to."

He watched a spot on the floor in front of him without seeing it. "I don't want her to make the wrong decision."

Temari came to his side; she stood, watching, until he looked up at her. "Right now she thinks she has two choices: go back to Leaf and get married, or go back to Leaf and not get married. Can you give her a choice that'll be better than either of those options?"

"I don't know if she'll want that choice either."

"You won't know unless you make the offer."

It was too soon to ask, he told her. They both knew the Leaf-nin was shaken but not seditious.

Temari sat down beside him. "You know, she told me she likes to spend time with you because she thinks you're calming to be around."

His eyes narrowed suspiciously.

She told him to think about it: he didn't judge Sakura for taking her time with her decision. He didn't push anything on her; instead he'd provided her with company and security. When everything Sakura thought she wanted fell to shambles, all three of the Sand siblings offered her support—but Gaara was undoubtedly the one she'd been leaning on the most.

"I haven't had experience in this sort of venture before," Gaara said, which was as close as he'd come to admitting he had no idea what he was doing.

"You know what to do," Temari replied. "It's the same move, just on a . . . different kind of battlefield. Shield and wait. When you see your opening, take it."

That was a plan he could wrap his mind around.

"They're starting to give her trouble, you know," Temari said. "Petty things. Wrong directions, made-up names for plants."

"Who?"

"You know."

And he did. Their faces had changed a few times over the past few years, but the natures of his would-be love interests hadn't changed at all.

"She didn't tell me."

"She won't," Temari replied. "It's why she keeps working for Sand instead of just claiming sanctuary. She doesn't want to be dependent—and she doesn't want _you_ to think less of her."

He frowned at the floor, knowing this wasn't something he could step into and defuse without insulting Sakura—or making things worse. He might care for and claim responsibility for Sand's shinobi, but that didn't mean they couldn't annoy him.

"Stop worrying. She'll work it out." Temari smiled toothily, humorlessly. "I know if I was in her position, I'd be happy to have an excuse to hit something."

She stood, then turned back to him. "Also? Make her bed when you're done here. I'll cover for you this time, but if she finds out about this"—she gestured to the rumpled sheets, the wrinkled blanket in his arms—"she's _not_ going to be happy."


	11. Unconventional Beginnings

**ooo**

He seemed distracted during their walk later that night; Sakura prodded him for it until he showed her Tsunade's letters. Years of working with the Hokage meant Sakura could pick up on nuance just as well as Gaara—but didn't mean the messages went over any better.

Sakura didn't want to admit it for fear of sounding like she was wasting everyone's time, but she'd been busy thinking of everything _but_ Sasuke. "I don't know. I'm closer than I was—I mean, I've got a better idea of what I want for myself, and . . . well, what I really want right now is to tell our council to bug off, and tell Sasuke to start over from scratch if he wants even the slightest chance in hell. But I don't think that'll fix things either." She sighed. "I doubt you can tell them to just take it all back and make it like it never happened."

"Not really."

"Tell her you'll let her know if I think of something? And . . ." She hated to say it. "To let us know if she thinks it'll be safe for me to come back?"

"Okay."

She hooked her arm through his and squeezed it briefly. She didn't mean to cause such a bother, she told him—she was sure enough people were out to give him gray hair without her helping.

He already had gray hair, though. He'd found the first few at his temples almost eight years ago; he ducked his head to show her.

Sakura giggled and patted him on the shoulder; then, conspiratorially, she admitted the same. She'd found white hairs in her bangs as well. Maybe, possibly, it was their coloring rather than their lives.

"Maybe," he agreed dubiously.

She laughed; they were both getting old, it seemed. Next he'd have wrinkles, from scowling so much.

He looked so offended at the suggestion that she had to laugh at him some more. Then he relaxed at her amusement, his features softening into something close to a smile, and she found herself smiling back without meaning to.

He wasn't handsome in any classical way, she decided, or really in any easily recognizable way. His chin was too small, his features strangely delicate, and he had the bad habit of looking down his nose at people—or up at them from under hairless brow ridges. But somehow . . .

Years of interest, harassment, and outright stalking by interested kunoichi had given Gaara what was nearly a sixth sense concerning females. Something would change in their expressions, in their eyes, in the way they watched him—and he'd know it was time to begin evasive maneuvers. Some he could shut down, some he could ignore . . . but their attention invariably made him uncomfortable, and he wasn't the type of person to tolerate discomfort.

But then that _something_ shifted in Sakura's eyes, and he realized she looked at him as a man instead of as a companion . . . about three seconds before she realized it herself.

She blinked suddenly, the soft, distracted smile fading from her face—and as he watched, her cheeks colored and hand raised to cover her mouth. She hadn't _meant_ it; she'd just noticed the way his lips curved, the length of his fingers and strength of his hands, the raspy hint of stone and blood and metal in his voice. All at once.

She was attracted to him—and now that she knew it, she didn't know what to say.

Gaara watched her blush deepen, watched her shrinking back as if distance would act as cover, and weighed his options. He didn't want to ignore her . . . but did he want to shut her down? Tell her to forget about it, or simply tell her he wasn't interested?

If this was what Temari'd been implying when she told him to make Sakura a better offer, he might have to disown her.

There was one thing Sakura knew amidst all of this, one thing she would hold on to—she would not apologize to him for it. And if he, with all his aloofness and the way he'd reacted to so many other girls' attention, even _dared_ to ask it of her—

Sakura set her jaw, preparing for the worst. Then he smiled at her, and her blush intensified even more as her eyes widened.

He brought her back to his quarters to give himself time to think; he set her to chopping dates as he mixed grains and nuts into a serviceable cereal.

The girl at his side watched the distance between them and wondered what it meant. The medic watched the specifically-sized scoops in multiple jars, noted the nutritional balance of their meal, and wondered how much of a non-sleeper's health would depend on his diet. She realized he'd been watching her just as closely when she finished chopping and, without looking, he handed her two bowls.

They sat, as he searched for words and she waited for the letdown.

"It's like you said," he told her. "Where it was something you always wanted for yourself, and then when the offer came, it wasn't right. So you ran. But for me it was something that was never right, and _I_ ran." Or snapped and snarled and ignored and blew off and snubbed and made his own breathing room with sandy, impenetrable walls. He stirred his bowl absently, considering his own hesitation.

She'd found words before; he could do as much.

"They hated me," he said, "and scorned me and ran from me and left me alone, and now they say they want to be with me. I don't think it's me they want. It's what you said—it's a fantasy, but it's theirs, and I'm not actually a part of it." He couldn't be a part of a relationship based on illusions and sanitized daydreams—but though he knew Sakura held any number of illusions, he was fairly certain none of them were about him.

"They want to _fix_ me. They think I need them to repair me." He straightened, chin tilting arrogantly. "I'm not like you . . . but I'm not broken, either."

"Have you told any of them that?"

"One. It didn't work. She told me she'd be whatever I needed; she was willing to erase herself to do that." His upper lip pulled back from his teeth in disgust. "She would've been the kind of good little wife my father would've wanted."

Sakura watched his knuckles whiten as his grip tightened on his bowl, and realized he was laying it all out. Any kind of relationship with him would be hard: he was still emotionally scarred and undeniably rough around the edges, would have any number of health problems because of the insomnia and would likely die—again—in defense of Sand.

The implications of him laying it all out caught up with her a second later.

Her eyes widened. "But you're still willing to try."

He looked her in the eye. "I won't make any promises."

"I— But I don't even know if this is something I want."

"Me either." He looked at her untouched bowl, then back up at her. "Eat."

She'd been ready for a letdown, for him to metaphorically kick her out onto Sand's cold night streets. Instead she was faced with an acceptance that felt more like being let into her building after a late-night false fire alarm: noise and fuss and worry, then staggering back inside to try and pick up where she'd left off. "I almost feel like we're supposed to shake on it," she muttered.

"I don't think that's how it's supposed to work."

"You're _really_ not good at this."

"It wasn't part of the job description."

"Keep that up and I'm going to start to think you have a sense of humor." Sakura grinned a little, despite herself. She offered him her hand, half-joking; half-seriously, he squeezed it. "To things not getting weird," she said.

"Yeah," he said, and went back to his breakfast.

**ooo**

He walked her back to Temari's, the same way he did every morning. "How does this change things?" he asked.

"I don't know. Should it?"

"I don't know."

She told him neither of them were good at this, and he had to agree.

They stalled at the entrance to Temari's building, her shuffling her feet, him watching the people on the street. "Well," Sakura said as she started to turn away—and on impulse he caught her wrist, pulling her back to him for a brief embrace. She stiffened at first, surprised; then her hands were at his sides and she went pliant against him.

She was acutely aware that this was the first time _he'd_ touched _her_ since that first night on the rooftop; he was acutely aware that this was a public gesture, a hair's breadth from outright laying claim to her. Both figured this was as good a start as any.

"Gaara?" she whispered, her breath tickling the side of his neck. "People are watching us."

She jumped a little as the tiny, sandy eye swirled into shape in a sheltered fold of his collar. Gaara counted their observers' expressions—quizzical looks, cocked eyebrows—and shrugged.

Sakura rolled her eyes but smiled as he released her—he might not say much, but she was getting used to it. "See you tonight?"

"Yeah."

Gaara left her there and immediately went searching for his brother. He found Kankurou in bed—alone, thankfully—and launched into his morning's timeline before the older shinobi'd even finished blinking sleep out of his eyes. But it wasn't advice Gaara wanted. He needed Kankurou to wash up, then go out and tell a story to whoever would listen.

"Does Temari need filled in?" A seamless front from all three siblings had been integral in preventing outright revolt during the early days of Gaara's rise to power.

Gaara shook his head. "I'll tell her what I just told you, but she knows the rest."

"So what am I telling them?"

"Everything."


	12. The Road to Thebes

**ooo**

Kankurou wasn't one to stand on a street corner and shout his message. He'd never handed out fliers; he'd never felt the need to put up posters. He had a better method.

He found a restaurant with a reasonable amount of people. Too few and word wouldn't spread fast enough; too many and his tale would be drowned out by the background noise. He sat; he made small talk with his waitress. He kept from smiling when she asked him how his family was doing—being known had its advantages.

Temari was doing fine, he told her, but Gaara . . . Well, Gaara might have an actual girlfriend. But the situation was a little complicated, and he wasn't sure that any of them knew what to make of it . . .

The people to either side of his table were listening now, their curiosity piqued.

His waitress, a girl of about his age, shot a considering look at the rest of the tables and then sat down across from him. "Try me."

Well, he told her, Gaara'd been spending a lot of time with the kunoichi from Leaf. Yes, that one, with the pink hair; the one that'd saved Kankurou's life a couple years before. And she was a refugee.

The next row of tables had started to listen; the closest ring's people were starting to surreptitiously turn in his direction. Kankurou took note and pitched his voice to carry.

He asked his waitress if she remembered that drawn-out, awful mess Leaf'd had with the last Uchiha. Yeah, _that_ one. Sasuke and Leaf both wanted a bevy of little Uchiha children—and they wanted Sakura to come back to Leaf and get started bearing them. Needless to say, Sakura wasn't taking this well. And since everyone here knew what could happen in that kind of situation . . .

There was some shifting and murmuring from a nearby table; the Fourth Kazekage's decisions regarding his wife's body hadn't been popular even before Gaara was old enough to start maiming people.

So yeah, Kankurou told them, Gaara'd taken it personally, and made a point of putting Sakura under his personal protection. Not that Kankurou could blame him, after what'd been done to their mother . . .

Kankurou trailed off, the connection that'd previously only been drifting around in the back of his mind suddenly making its way to the forefront. Gaara's hatred for their father, for Sasuke; how, deep in psychosis, Gaara'd shown a vast and terrible attachment to the mother he'd never known.

He shook it away just as quickly, telling himself that Gaara finding someone he got along with didn't necessarily have to have some awful hidden implications.

"And they seem to like each other," he finished, having lost his momentum.

"The Kazekage's human," said the guy at the table behind him, and returned to his meal. "Nothing unduly complicated about that."

Another patron cut his eyes at the people paying attention, then voiced his opinion. "Every ninja at Sand has had someone we care about die—and too many of us have been there to see it. Every one of us has spent hours, even days thinking of how we'd save them, how we'd fix things so they'd make it out alive. Gaara's getting a chance to actually do that. I don't think anyone here could fault him for it."

"And if they're making each other happy," his waitress smiled, "then let them be happy."

Kankurou nodded, satisfied yet still unsettled. He thanked the people there for helping him, paid, and headed out. In an hour or so he'd have a loud and public discussion with some friends in another part of Sand; after that, he'd have lunch out with his old instructor Baki; after that, he'd find a way to work the story into conversation in the marketplace. Somewhere along the line he'd find time to talk to Temari, too.

But rumor set loose to run its own way has a colorful habit of mutating. A good number of people got Kankurou's original message; a sizable number also believed Gaara was shielding the Leaf-nin from a proverbial and certain fate worse than death. Another sprouted and went creeping off on its own, spawned by the hug and their early morning walks: Despite any of Kankurou's efforts, word soon had it that Gaara'd seduced the Hokage's apprentice in order to bring her medical knowledge to Sand. People on the street that afternoon patted Gaara on the shoulder, congratulatory. He did his best to not look bewildered. A maybe-possibly relationship was one thing—but he hadn't intended any of it to be a seduction.

Now he wondered if he should.

It seemed Temari's suggestion might have some merit. If he kept Sakura, gave her a place at his side, she wouldn't go back. That way, she wouldn't be forced or tricked or pressured into doing _anything_ with the Uchiha.

The more he thought about it, the more he liked the idea. It positively bubbled, gleeful: him stealing and sheltering Sasuke's chosen; Sakura turning to face him and not turning back; her presence in his city, in his hospital, at his side as they faced the morning sunrise. His, his, _his._

There was only one problem. He had no idea how to properly seduce anyone.

One of the street merchants helped, sidling up to him and casually, offhandedly saying, "They like when you give them flowers."

Gaara purchased a fistful of flowers, chosen by scent and color; he put the small bouquet in one of Temari's water glasses and left them at Sakura's door. On his way out of Temari's place, he mentally praised himself for this display of normalcy. Maybe seduction wouldn't be so hard after all.

**ooo**

Sakura found the flowers on the floor by her room, their stems tied together with a red ribbon. Though they had no note, she knew who'd brought them. She also guessed Gaara wasn't like her and had never learned how to create messages from flowers' meanings. Otherwise the bundle in her hands said he was a shy young girl, he thought of her like a sibling, he had impure thoughts about his siblings, and he was very sorry for the death in her family.

Temari'd seen a lot of girls get presents from their significant others; she'd seen dozens of reactions. But she'd never seen someone cover their mouth with their hand to muffle an outright guffaw.

"You okay?"

"Yeah, it's just . . ." Her shoulders shook with repressed mirth. "He really _is_ new at this, isn't he?"

"Yeah. About that . . . You're _both_ okay with this?"

"We are. We're . . . trying to not let it really affect things between us." The Leaf-nin looked at the flowers again and added, "Much." It was confusing, she told Temari: No matter what she and Gaara had agreed, it seemed like everyone around them wanted to blow things out of proportion. Sakura couldn't figure out what the big deal was. They liked each other and might go out sometime. It wasn't like they were _eloping._ But a half a dozen fellow medics had asked her if she'd be seeing the Kazekage that night—and she hadn't gotten the gist of their queries until _after_ she'd gone on about how Gaara was interesting, and intelligent, and compassionate, and had even helped her with a medical technique she'd been working on.

_And endearing,_ she silently added. She wasn't sure if it was quite right to call the Kazekage endearing, but the blooming and mangled messages in her hands almost mandated it.

Temari tried to clarify Sand's interest: The Kazekage behaving strangely wasn't particularly noteworthy. The Kazekage's first attempt at courting, though, most certainly was.

"But . . . It can't just be simple, can it?"

Her worries mostly alleviated, Temari laughed. "I think this is as simple as it gets."

"Maybe." Sakura smiled as she brushed her fingertips over the flowers' petals, wondering.

_If you hurt him, _Temari thought, _there is no place on this earth you can hide from us._ But she didn't say it. She didn't want to mar the pair's interaction with any more threats.


	13. The Ease of Gentle Things

Off to ANext this weekend in New Jersey! Sorry in advance: next week's update might be late. I've got a _lot_ to get done for AX.

**

* * *

ooo**

She giggled when she hugged him hello that night. He took it to mean she liked her gift. They wandered yet again, maintaining physical distance out of twinned respect and caution, saying what they could with looks and smiles.

The ever-present wind picked up, pushing at them instead of cavorting around them, driving sand against their exposed skin with hundreds of tiny prickles until he shielded them out of annoyance. They climbed to the highest level of the tallest building in Sand to escape its pique; they lay on the wall's edge, close enough to feel each other's warmth, and counted meteors in the clear night sky.

She told him about the medics' interest; he told her about Sand's residents showing their general approval. Both agreed that other people were strange.

He didn't tell her how he'd asked Kankurou how to seduce a girl, only to have his brother completely shoot him down. Kankurou'd reminded him that Sakura basically left Leaf to avoid sex—and that sex was probably the last thing she actually _needed_ from him.

Hesitantly, Sakura told Gaara her least noble thoughts on the entire matter: that she was sick of worrying, of trying to make the right choice, of concern about people's reactions or the consequences of any choice she could make. She just wanted all of it to go away.

She worried he'd see her as weak. He saw the hint of an opening, the beginning of a chance to take her permanently under his wing. So he told her he couldn't fault her—that if he knew how to make this nightmare disappear so they could just have the peace and calm of each other's company, he'd do so in a heartbeat.

Sakura'd known he _supported_ her, but to hear it, to know this was weighing on him as well . . . "I'm glad you understand," she managed. But to her, the scope of the words wasn't enough. She wanted to hug him again but was afraid it'd be too much, too fast. The morning would come soon enough—she would have her time then.

Later, at her door, she held on longer than he expected. Having had yet another night's chill softened by her company, Gaara let himself relax against her. Perhaps, he felt, he was warming more than his hands against her body; he told himself the sentiment was silly but liked it anyway. His palms fit against the narrowest point of her waist so he could feel her ribs move as she breathed. This part, he decided, was something he could get used to.

But he still worried.

Kankurou'd told him not to rush things, that he was doing just fine—but Kankurou didn't have Leaf breathing down his neck over when (or if) Sakura would be returned.

He was confused and frustrated—a combination that made for unkind correspondence. Tsunade'd wanted kept in the loop, but the arrival of Gaara's next message left her wondering if she would've been better off leaving him to his own devices.

_A good medic is an extremely valuable asset, and your student is a very good medic. I'm beginning to believe she appreciates the comfort and safety Sand can offer—perhaps more so than promises made by those who can't put words to their true intentions. She seems relieved that all I ask is for her to work. I commend you for your training but, with respect to the wishes of those who ask for her return, I still believe she would be best suited to remain here._

But those who wanted to hasten Sakura's marriage were at her door at all hours, their expressions hardening more and more as she told them once again that Sakura's mission hadn't yet ended. And Sasuke was starting to ask questions she wasn't ready to answer but couldn't bring herself to lie about. She couldn't avoid the coming confrontation for much longer.

The two leaders spent the rest of the day playing a very slow game of tag, wasting time on rooftops, waiting on their winged messengers.

Her message said there were many whose plans for Leaf's future hinged on Sakura's return, that for them it was a matter of necessity. She implied the pressure Leaf's elders were beginning to bring to bear, hoping Gaara would read it as yet another reason to hold his ground.

He suggested Tsunade send Shizune, as her more experienced student, in the place of whatever Leaf wanted Sakura to do.

Shizune read the scroll, spit on the tiles under their feet, and marched away from Tsunade without a word.

Tsunade's response was an icily polite refusal, stating that she considered both kunoichi important enough to preclude their use as simple political pawns. Gaara read her wording as: _I won't put either of my students through that._

If Tsunade were serious about Sakura's future in Leaf, he wrote, then perhaps she should confer with those others who wished to have a hand in that future. _Go on, tell them._

She expressed doubt they'd understand or respond as thoughtfully. _You probably don't want me to do that. _

He suggested she simply didn't want to deal with them herself. But it was all right, he wrote—after all, she _was_ getting older as well. If time and distance and his own responsibilities were not a factor, he would be more than happy to deal with them for her.

Tsunade read the letter a few times, dissecting every verbal slap (_You can't do your job. Are you, the Hokage, afraid of conflict? Are you too old to do your job? Do I have to do your job for you?_), and considered how she'd placed herself squarely between a bee's nest and a huge, angry hornet.

But if they wanted to sting each other instead of her . . .

She sat alone on the rooftop's ledge, rolling the scroll between her fingers, and knew that things would only get uglier before they could get better.


	14. Words Unsaid

**ooo**

Gaara wasn't sure if theirs was the calm before the storm, or at the eye of it.

When Sakura arrived for their walk later that night, he told her about the afternoon's correspondence—then regretted it as she went silent, staring into space, her expression that of a person preparing to face their execution.

"You shouldn't have to do this," she said.

"_I_ made the choice to," he told her.

"But if Leaf ends up trying to start a war," she said, "or even just tries to kidnap me to get me back—"

"It won't come to that."

"Are you sure?"

"I'll make sure."

He wondered if Naruto and Lee would stand against him if he were to invade Leaf, in search of those who'd wish Sakura into Sasuke's arms with such haste. He wondered if, upon hearing his reasons, they'd fight at his side.

Special-abilitied bloodlines were terribly expensive and time-consuming to create from nothing. Building one from the blood and tissue and body of a captured shinobi could still take years. The most time- and cost-effective method at hand was still to acquire heirs. In that respect, Gaara could _understand_ Leaf's encouraging the last Uchiha to procreate, in the same way he'd understood why his father'd attempted to circumvent the entire process: training his children relentlessly from the time they were old enough to hold a weapon and, in Gaara's case, murdering one person in hopes of strengthening another. But just because he _understood_ didn't mean he agreed with any of their methods.

Sakura watched him, her worry visibly unabated, and he stepped forward to meet her. Here, in his quarters, there would be no one to see if he touched her again, if he embraced her and stroked her hair in a way he hoped was comforting.

"I'm sick of being scared," she grumbled into his shoulder.

"Good."

He thought the words—_And if you stay here, you won't have to be_—but didn't say them out loud.

They stayed in for a little while that night, sitting spine to spine, shoulders together, as he talked her through the meditation techniques that helped keep him alert and healthy. Then it was back to the street, walking just a little closer than before, smiling just a little as their knuckles brushed each other's. Their relationship wasn't anything like what Sakura'd expected it to be; it wasn't fighting or stress or some dramatic rushing sweep of emotions. Instead it steadily and stealthily built upon itself, something as natural and intrinsic to human nature as hope. It was that she had a friend, a close friend, and she just happened to wish he'd stop walking and kiss her.

But she was afraid to push, and Gaara, mindful of Kankurou's advice, didn't want to step out of line.

They ended up talking about children, of all things. She might want some, at some point—but she had plenty of time and would prefer her life settled down a little first. In response, Gaara told her how he'd considered taking in some of Sand's orphans. It'd be an echo of Iruka taking care of Naruto; it'd be a move to save others from the mind-breaking loneliness the redhead had endured. If Gaara could take care of just a few, if he could help just a little, then who knew how many lives he could save.

But this idea would require patience, and he wasn't sure how much more of that he had to spare.

**ooo**

Leaf's elders finally convened to speak with the Hokage. Tsunade looked over their faces, their tense shoulders and set jaws, and knew the bee's nest had begun to move—and that it was time for her to step out of its way.

They needed to know when Haruno Sakura would return.

Tsunade took a deep breath. "The Kazekage has expressed interest in retaining her services. Indefinitely."

The hum of the bee's nest in front of her changed to an angry buzz. But every day was a delay, they called; every hour past was another span of time past where the Uchiha might go rogue again or where someone might make an attempt on his life.

"The Kazekage knows," she said. "But that hasn't changed his mind."

But what did the Kazekage _want,_ they demanded.

_To save his mother, if only by proxy, _she thought._ To protect the friend of his friend and, possibly, to cause a little havoc in the process. _

He hadn't made that clear yet, she told them. But maybe, if they asked correctly, he would.

A determined hornet can kill any number of bees, she knew. A team of hornets can take out an entire hive.

But with her student's life hanging in the middle, as some bizarre sort of prize . . .

Tsunade shook her head and walked away, leaving the group to their own blunderings. She'd just have to trust that the Kazekage could handle this on his own.

**ooo**

The letter that arrived wasn't from Tsunade, but from Leaf's elders. It offered a replacement medic and money in exchange for his self-appointed charge; it offered a cut of incoming missions; it offered more broad trade agreements and more open sharing of information. All Leaf wanted, it said, was the return of Haruno Sakura.

For them, it was the price of rebuilding a bloodline.

For Gaara, it registered as the letter-writing committee trying to put a number on the mother he'd never known, the father who'd hated him, the uncle who'd betrayed him, and every other ounce of his childhood misery.

He sat at his desk, the heels of his hands pressed to his eye sockets, and thought very hard about his response. Eventually he picked up his pen and started to write.

They could have her back, he wrote, when the ocean froze over, when his desert turned to a jungle, and when they'd staked the Uchiha's corpse to their walls. Or never. Because he wouldn't let them take someone he knew, someone he was really growing to _like,_ and denigrate her by making her a walking womb for some illogical traitorous deserter scum who'd been lucky enough to be born with a bloodline ability. The Uchiha could die alone for all he cared—but if Leaf insisted on something as backwards and outdated and _insulting_ as forcing a marriage in order to make that red-eyed pestilence happy and spawn a batch of children that would invariably be hideously stunted by having someone as kind and caring as _Uchiha Sasuke _as a father, then he, Gaara, would have to stop things himself. It might mean he kept Sakura, and it might mean he marched into Leaf and wiped out whatever imbecile looked at the Kazekage's history and thought it was a good idea that warranted replication. And if that meant war, then Leaf would fucking deserve it.

He set down the pen and read his missive again, finding it cathartic, pleasing.

Then balled it up.

Threw it away.

Dug it out of the trash and burned it.

His next letter was simple, pared down to one word: _No._

He sent it instead, and found it to be almost as satisfying.

Gaara went to the bird cotes afterward, searching for his equilibrium amongst the creatures there. He fed everything, from the largest raptors to the sparrows, tiny and fragile as peace. He cleaned the cages for good measure, then sat, petting his favorite hawk until it became annoyed with the attention and started nibbling his fingers.

He checked the time and sighed—he'd wasted hours. But Sakura would be out of work soon.

It'd only been a few days of embraces, but he found he craved them—craved contact, physical comfort. And she, he knew, wouldn't turn on him for showing affection.


	15. Finding Scars

At Anime Expo, spreading con plague to the Artist Alley. :D

* * *

**ooo**

"What do you mean, you're _kind of_ seeing him?"

The clash had been coming. Gaara's most determined devotees didn't understand Sakura's strange agreement with their Kazekage, or how the "relationship" they so begrudged her was built primarily on insomnia and a few embraces. They waited until she was alone and on her way back to Temari's; they waited until the street was mostly clear.

Sakura looked over the three girls' faces and, instead of apprehension, felt relief: Here it was, and soon it would be over.

"I don't see why it matters," she told them, and kept walking.

"Because _some of us_ didn't think it was fitting to pull a damsel-in-distress routine with him."

It was a knife's edge against an already raw wound, and she turned on her heel. "Do you think I actually want this?" she snapped. "That I _wanted_ to give up my home and almost everyone I know—and that having a _boyfriend_ could somehow make all that better?"

"It's awfully _convenient,"_ one replied—then all three went completely silent and still, and she knew who else had been following her. Fifteen feet away, Gaara leaned against a building's wall, arms folded, expression perfectly blank.

"I can take care of myself," she growled at him, as angry that she'd been caught up in this mess as she was with the possibility that he'd seen it, that he'd stepped in to clean things up for her rather than let her hold her own.

He closed his eyes, opened them with a small, vicious, knowing smile. "Go ahead."

Everything that still needed an outlet, that couldn't be talked or cried out, welled up in her, and she turned to the three kunoichi. They returned with smiles, and she couldn't help but think that at least Sand created confident shinobi.

Chin up and eyebrows raised, she cracked her knuckles. "Is this really how it's gonna go?"

Apparently it was.

A few moments of violence later found one backing away, leaving another unconscious on the ground and the third squealing for mercy as Sakura pinned the girl's shoulders with her knees and reared back to hit her again. At the apex of her swing she paused, realizing her battle'd already been won—and Gaara swooped in, grabbed her wrist, and dragged her away before the crowd could get any larger.

"You didn't stop me," she said, reeling as much from the adrenaline as from the punches she'd taken.

"I knew you'd know when to."

"How sure were you?"

"Sure enough."

"Like you were sure I'd win?"

"I know you're good. I know they're cocky."_ I wouldn't have let it go wrong_ was the unspoken addition, but she seemed to hear it anyway.

He led her to his quarters, sat her down on a chair, knelt in front of her with a washcloth, and had started wiping the grime and blood from her scratches before he spoke again.

"Also, it showed me that no matter what they say to me, they're still the same as they were twelve years ago."

"If I give them another twelve years," she said, determined to crack the gravity of his expression, "do you think they'll want to sleep with me, too?"

His smile came a little easier this time. "For your sake, I hope not."

It wasn't so much for him that the girls had decided to harass her; it was that their tone, their expressions. Because while the aggression was something they never would've dared direct at him, the rest was still far too much the same.

She brought back everything, _everything_ from his past that he'd struggled to step away from; she let him know that under the callus and the coldness, he was still bleeding.

Her face was clean; he began work on her knuckles. Not much of the blood there was her own.

Sakura squeezed his fingers. "Did you not stop me because you're not supposed to hit them yourself?"

"A little."

"And the rest?"

This question was harder to answer. "Because . . . I wanted to see if you understood."

Her fingers tangled with his, with the washcloth, idly toying with it more than cleaning. "I don't . . ."

"How did it feel?"

For a moment she couldn't look at him; her hands on the washcloth stilled, and he took the opportunity to carefully wipe her fingernails. Finally: "It felt good."

"I knew. I saw." His hand raised towards her face, his expression a mixture of wonder and excitement. "You understand, then, what it's like. You're like me."

She was a wreck—skin scuffed, hair mussed, with a faint trace of blood on her split and swelling lower lip. He kissed her anyway. His tongue touched her wound, mingling her blood with their kiss; and, almost delirious with the perfection of it, he pressed closer—holding her face with just his fingertips, kissing her so carefully she could barely feel the sting of her bruises. Any more force and she might want to stop, and then there would be no more of this rapturous combination, of wet and friction and the slightest taste of coppery salt.

_Like metal,_ he thought distantly, _it tastes like—_

He moved closer almost without intending to; her knees parted to either side of his hips without a hint of resistance.

Sakura ran her fingers into his hair and sighed against his mouth, flinching just a little as he tasted her lip again. Gaara shuddered and murmured something she couldn't understand, and the combination send a shiver down her spine, turning her appreciation to full-blown want. She didn't want to think, not anymore; she just wanted this to continue. The future loomed and threatened, with decisions and politics and disappointment and fear. But here, now—here and now were perfect places.

She reached for his hands, intending to tell him to touch her, that it was all right—and he froze, wide-eyed, confused and lost and suddenly finding himself in way over his head.

Because if the taste of her blood reminded him of Yashamaru's, how his uncle's was the first human blood he'd tasted; because if she'd reminded him of his mother's brother before, the closest person to a mother figure he'd had; because he'd drawn so many mental parallels between her and his own mother and because he recognized all these things and _was still aroused by the contact—_

His mouth opened and closed, and he stared at her, seeking differentiation, desperately searching for the features that made her _her_ and not anyone else, anyone half-forgotten or never-known.

If not for the years of rejection, of never being good enough, she might not have felt the same sinking, crushing sensation of having done something terribly wrong. "Is— is it me? Did I do something—"

He shook his head—no. His hands cupping her face were no longer gentle, but his concern was now with convincing himself that it was _her_ he'd confessed to, _her_ he'd spent time with, _her_ he'd wanted. The words that finally came weren't a declaration of affection but a plea for understanding: "There's something wrong with me."

There were some things, Sakura realized with the clarity of hindsight, that he might just be too damaged for.

And there were some things, Gaara realized, that he could _never_ tell her.

"Sorry," he said, and closed his eyes.

"It'll be okay," Sakura murmured in return—though she had no idea what "it" was. He didn't resist when she pulled him closer, though before his cheek settled against her shoulder she could see the tension in his jaw and pained tightness around his eyes. She didn't ask any more, but stroked his neck until he relaxed, wondering what she'd possibly gotten herself into.


	16. Small Mercies

Off to Otakon next weekend!

**

* * *

ooo**

Afterwards, he walked her back to Temari's. He touched her purpling cheek as they stopped in front of the building, fixing her face in his memory. _Her,_ he told himself. _No one else. Just her._

She smiled faintly, hopefully, and with a whirl of sand he was gone.

He found Temari first. In the time it took Sakura to climb the stairs, he tasked his sister with dealing with the three kunoichi. Gaara didn't trust himself to do it, especially now. Things would undoubtedly escalate—and as voices raised so would his temper, until it'd become only logical for him to crush his annoyances like insects.

Temari recognized his body language and knew what he meant when Gaara told her he'd be busy for the rest of the day. But then Sakura was at the door, and Gaara disappeared before the Leaf-nin knew he'd been there.

It was time for him to hide.

He locked his door and drew the shades; he didn't want anyone to see him. He turned off the lights, because dark always seemed to help.

Insanity for him felt simply like a different way of thinking—like taking one street over, one just as familiar and well-seeming as his normal path, to reach a destination. But he knew this path would bring out his absolute worst; he knew giving in to it would endanger everyone he cared for and everything he'd worked for. But it still beckoned to him with the familiarity of the beast that'd been passenger in his head for sixteen years; it sang out to him, telling him it didn't matter if he confused Sakura with his mother because that way he'd have them both.

To give in was the ease of an exhalation, the comfort of a warm blanket, as natural a feeling as putting one foot in front of the other . . . but the fight to keep from sliding was panic etched with terror.

He wedged his back into a corner, fists clenching, and made himself recall the faces of every shinobi he'd sent out on missions that morning. He visualized and counted the sentries who'd greeting him; he even mentally traced through his conversations with Sakura from the previous night.

It was how he knew he was still sane. There were small mercies of the madness: he knew he'd _been_ crazy and had done any number of terrible things—but he couldn't clearly remember most of it. But if he could keep in mind every person who trusted him or counted on him or looked up to him, then he could dig his nails—his nails, not his claws—into reality and hold on for the sake of all their lives.

Once grounded, he could begin to deal with whatever'd shattered his equilibrium—but not a moment sooner.

It took hours. His tendons protested when he finally unclenched his hands and his jaw; his back creaked as he straightened. He examined his calm; he tested it with images of her, then recollected sensations of her kiss, then with the memory of the taste of her blood.

Then, finally, with their combination—and his reaction.

Here, with no distractions and his mind held at an almost preternatural calm, he could dissect what he'd felt. It unsettled him that the first girl to hold his attention for more than a few days reminded him of dead immediate family . . . but perhaps, he told himself, it'd just been a terrible and extensive coincidence.

Or maybe he wouldn't have paid as much attention to her had her situation not been so familiar.

Or possibly, potentially, he just liked her.

But how could he know for sure?

He folded his arms over his knees and let himself feel something—annoyance. He just wanted a normal, comfortable relationship. And up until her blood against his tongue triggered some awful moment of confusion, he'd had one.

And her . . .

And to think, he grumbled to himself, seducing her had originally seemed like such a straightforward idea.

But she didn't want the Uchiha. She hadn't said she wanted to stay with Gaara yet . . . but he felt the moment was coming. He'd provided shelter, comfort, companionship; he'd proven superior. He hadn't fixed things—but he'd get there. And he'd certainly put a large dent in Leaf's plans for their kunoichi. And _that_ was something.

And, he told himself, it wasn't like she _looked_ like his mother. So things weren't _that_ bad.

Right?

Something still wasn't right—no matter what he told himself, he couldn't shake the feeling. But time had crept on as he'd stabilized himself, and Sakura'd probably be coming to find him soon. If she wasn't too upset with him.

Shifting from his forced calm brought a swirl of nearly tactile emotions. His worry was the heaviness of wet soil; his craving for the calm and normalcy of her company like a thick and broken piece of glass—alternating smooth, bumpy, and dangerously jagged.

The part of him that demanded a hunt, that knew hunting best, squeezed him like a snake: raspy, dry, rhythmically contracting. But that part felt too close to madness; instead he retreated to the craving.

Moving like a man three times his age, Gaara got to his feet. He couldn't let her find him like this.

**ooo**

It was after two in the morning when Sakura woke on her own, but for the first time in a long while she stayed in her bed rather than head out.

She missed Ino terribly. There were times when she needed another female friend to help decode the strangeness of males . . . and she was certain she couldn't ask Temari. The Sand siblings seemed extremely open, but she was still sure their little brother's possible irreparable sexual dysfunction wasn't something she could discuss with either of them.

But with the way he'd kissed her . . .

She closed her eyes and let herself remember it—his touch, his kiss, how their bodies had fit together—and she knew that if he hadn't balked, things might've gone completely, deliriously out of control.

But with the _way_ he'd balked, she now had to worry if it'd even be possible for him to have a physical relationship.

Drifting, she wondered if she'd have this sort of problem with anyone else. Sasuke's features overlaid Gaara's for a second; for a heartbeat, it was his hands, his mouth, his thighs parting hers—

And the image violently, viscerally disgusted her.

The depth of her aversion startled her wide awake. Once the shock abated, she mentally ran through every guy she'd had a crush on, gone out with, been interested in. None made her feel as _dirty_ as imagining Sasuke; none made her question why she'd sullied the memory with his interjection. But none appealed to her in the same way as the wiry, damaged redhead.

But Gaara, with the sting of his tongue against her lip and the warm, intimate pressure of chest and stomach and hips . . . She closed her eyes again, savoring, letting the rekindled memory wash away any trace of any other possibilities.

Things might've just gotten weird for them, she thought to herself, and frowned. Now she wondered if she should even go see Gaara that night. But when she came out of her room she found him sitting, waiting, his back against the door frame.

"You okay?" she whispered as she knelt beside him.

"Enough." But he didn't look at her when he spoke.

"Do you want to . . . well, talk about it?"

"No."

"Just . . . let me know if I can help. Okay?"

At last, eye contact. "Okay." And then he was attentive again, examining her face confusedly. Aside from a small scab where her lip'd been split, she was unmarked.

Sakura smiled, then quickly showed him another technique of hers. A bruise was just a series of tiny clots under the skin; a chakra pulse at the right wavelength would break them up and send them on their way. It was precision work, yes, but better than a genjutsu some people could sense anyway.

He knew the trick to it; whoever was paying attention at Sand would only know that she'd taken on three kunoichi at once and walked away virtually unscathed.

It was silly to congratulate himself on his good taste, but he did so anyway.

Sakura took his hand, holding it between her own. "I just want you to know where I'm coming from here. You've told me so many things, and I've seen you do so many things . . . that if suddenly something happens that's so awful you can't tell me about it? I've got to wonder how bad it can really be." She squeezed his hand. "I'm not scared of you . . . but I'm scared of what it means if you won't talk to me."

"It's not you. I promise. It's something I have to deal with on my own." Yet another part of his father's legacy, he thought bitterly.

"I'll wait," she told him. "If that's what it takes, I . . . I want you to be okay too."

"I don't want to upset you." His other hand joined hers, and any hesitation she might've felt fell away.

"There's some things I shouldn't have to accept," she told him. "But there's some things I can choose to."

Any further conversation on the subject stilled as Temari joined them, drawn by the sound of Gaara's voice. She hadn't expected him to be out yet.

"Reports now or later?" she asked him, unsure of how much he'd told Sakura—or even if he _should_ be out.

"Later."

Temari read one of her answers in his tone and expression: he hadn't told Sakura much of anything. She hoped Gaara would come clean soon—because while Sakura'd been remarkably accepting of him, it wouldn't do well for her to think he'd been hiding things from her.

"Make sure he eats something," she told the Leaf-nin. "He probably hasn't all day."

The pair had a tiny rooftop picnic with rice balls and cold noodles collected from his place, then sat in companionable silence, passing a bottle of tea back and forth. In the meantime, Sakura sifted through the clues she'd gotten—clues which proved unfortunately and painfully straightforward. They'd kissed and he'd freaked out—and Temari's offhanded comment about feeding him implied that he did this enough for his siblings to recognize the signs and know how to react.

He might've told her he wasn't broken, but he certainly wasn't unmarked either.

But she'd known he wouldn't be normal, even if she couldn't help but feel this wasn't what she'd signed on for.

But if they could still have this . . .

He was right: It'd upset her to not have a more physical aspect to their relationship—but she wasn't the kind of girl who'd shove it on him, knowing he wouldn't be able to handle it.

Later they sat on the wall again for the sunrise, silent, their knees touching, letting light like liquid wash over them on a dewless morning.

She missed Leaf's mornings, she told him; she missed the sunlight on wet grass and the rising swell of birdsong. She missed humidity and rain showers and running streams and a gentle, not-punishing sun; she missed walking the gardens, thick with blossoms and bees, and the pleasure of finding the plants' scent on her clothes for the rest of the day.

He asked if it was home for her, and she recognized the depth of the question.

"I miss it," she told him, "and I'm fond of it, yes . . . but I feel like I'm drifting now."

"We have a rainy season," he offered.

"What's it like?"

"Wet."

She rolled her eyes, then laughed. "Is it _really?"_

If she stayed around for a few more months, he suggested, then she could see it herself.

She considered, shifting weights on mental scales . . . then shyly smiled and told him she might like that. Smiling as well, Gaara felt himself relax a little more.

After a few minutes a messenger arrived, a scroll for Gaara in his hand. Gaara accepted and read it, then closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and wondered if Tsunade was laughing at him.

"What is it?" Sakura asked.

He rolled the scroll up and blinked her. "Naruto's coming."


	17. Communication

**ooo**

Sakura came out of her room in time for the debriefings Gaara couldn't have handled the night before. "And as for the three Sakura fought," Temari said, then paused. "You ready for this one?"

Gaara took a seat across the table from her and nodded.

"It was all a series of gross misunderstandings."

Over the years he'd perfected a flat affect; Gaara's expression didn't budge. As she inched up beside him, Sakura couldn't tell if he was even breathing. Unsettled by his silence, Sakura spoke for them both. "How's that supposed to have worked?"

"We've always pushed to better our shinobi. The girls you fought knew their value was in their strength and capability; that's something Gaara's always . . . strongly encouraged. But then _you_ turned up here—and you were in danger, and visibly shaken, and scared and not fighting, even when they started to give you trouble. You came off as the kind of ninja we'd told them not to be—but the next thing we all know, you're spending a lot of time with him."

Temari crossed her legs, then interlaced her fingers over her knee. "So as far as they knew, the head authority who'd told them to be stronger—with the implication that he'd like them more if they were—had fallen for someone who . . . wasn't."

"Why didn't they just ask?"

"Are you gonna walk up to a rival and ask them if they're really better than you are? It was easier for them to just think less of you—and feel justified when you didn't turn on them for anything. Then Kankurou's rumors hit the streets, and they figured that if you could be rattled easily, they might be able to rattle you right out of Sand. But when you challenged them, in front of him no less . . . It wasn't something any of them could walk away from."

Gaara still hadn't moved. If he'd been more open, he thought, this could've been avoided. If he'd been harsher with his admirers, maybe; if he'd done any number of things differently. But this was a dangerous thought path to take, one that'd cripple him with regrets. Far better for him to fix the present.

But as the Kazekage, he _was_ still responsible for his shinobi—even if they desperately needed to carry out better research before leaping to dire conclusions.

He needed to officially decide what to do with them, Temari reminded him. They'd still attacked a refugee, within Sand's walls and in full view of their Kazekage. If Sakura'd been a dignitary, they might've had to pay for their mistakes with their lives; if Sakura'd had any less self-control, their forfeit may have been the same.

Gaara, having not dealt with a situation like this before, hesitated. He couldn't pass judgment yet—not, at least, until he was sure the course of action wasn't motivated in any way by revenge.

Sakura watched him, recognizing his indecision, wondering at how easy it was for her to forget that he was only her age.

Maybe, she thought, it was time for her to help take some of this weight.

"I'll deal with it," she said.

She shouldn't _have_ to deal with it, though, and both Sand-nin told her so.

"Doesn't matter," she said, and straightened her spine. "I should've taken care of things before it got this bad. Give them D-ranked missions for a month if you want—but let me deal with them otherwise."

"What are you going to do?"

She smiled. "I fought them already . . . so I'll try to talk to them. Worse comes to worse, I'll fight them again."

Temari's eyebrows arched. "It's a way to get your exercise."

"If _she'd_ been able to fight too . . ." Gaara started, but trailed off, eyes fixed on the tabletop.

Sakura looked and was touched by what she saw: the human under the robes of office; the young man who wore the scars of his past as honestly and openly as the kanji on his forehead. Temari, more experienced in dealing with her little brother, saw his fragmented stability—and the mental comparison he'd made.

Gaara looked up, meeting Temari's eyes first, and she concentrated on her breathing to not look away. Was this dread a subconscious recognition of their path's inherent danger? Or a logical response built of years of guessing at her little brother's mental state? There'd been hundreds of nights on missions where every time Gaara wandered off, she and Kankurou and Baki would exchange glances and wonder if the redhead was going to relieve himself or hunting for something to kill. For the sake of their lives, they'd all learned to read the nuances of his body language: the slight rounding of his shoulders, the tension in his forearms, his tendency to stare silently at nothing and the subtle shift of flat affect to flat, predatory calculation.

She was no longer sure Gaara was the one who needed protection in this relationship.

Then Sakura moved, his attention shifted to her, and Temari couldn't say if she'd imagined what she'd seen. The Leaf-nin reached towards him with a half-formed excuse; Gaara caught her hand and pressed his lips to skin split by an unfortunate girl's tooth. Sakura's words trailed to nothingness as the two smiled at each other, each hopeful for completely different reasons.

It wasn't until Sakura went back to shake out the day's clothing that she noticed he'd pulled every single grain of sand out of her room.

The salt of her skin was on his lips; Gaara tasted it thoughtfully. Temari wisely kept her questions to herself.

Upon returning to his office Gaara unrolled the scroll again, as if to remind himself that he hadn't imagined it. _Naruto shall be there as soon as he can,_ read the message he'd gotten that morning. _He and Leaf's elders believe this shall help everyone get a better grasp on the situation. _

"Not helpful," he said, and frowned.

It was like some invisible timer kept resetting itself, then taunting them with yet another ominous deadline. Soon, one way or another, Sakura'd have to make a final decision. The redhead felt things were simple enough: Leaf wanted Sakura, he didn't want them to have Sakura, and Sakura wanted . . .

For him to be okay with taking their relationship to another level, she'd said. Which meant she wanted that next level—which meant she wanted _him._

He wouldn't send that information on to the Hokage for a little while.

But if things continued to go well—if he could just put himself in order for what they had together, and if he could do it for the _right reasons_—then soon, hopefully, he could drop all pretense and spell the entire thing out. It'd certainly mean more unpleasantness, since Leaf had no reason to simply concede to one of their best medics leaving . . . but it'd at least be an _honest_ unpleasantness.

In the meantime, he was left standing here talking to a piece of paper.

With a gesture, a glower, and an ounce of sand, he shredded the message to fibers. Rationally, he knew insanity had been a terrible lifestyle—but it'd also been so very much _simpler._

**ooo**

The medics were discussing her. Sakura waited around a corner from them, her back to the stone wall, listening.

"Hush," one said. "They'll be good for each other."

"Or wreck a few buildings if they fight," someone shot back, to a chorus of chuckles.

Another wanted to know what things were coming to, if the future of their village was out getting into fistfights on the street for their Kazekage's affection.

Yet another thought it was about time Sakura'd stood up for herself. "People'll think twice before they try to say she's not good enough for him, right?"

The turn of phrase bothered her in some way she couldn't easily define. Sakura shook her head and left the medics to their gossip. Soon enough, she put her finger on the reason for her unease.

The words hadn't been there—at least, not all the time—but the implication that'd been ground into her psyche was clear: If she'd been a better person, everything around her would've been okay. If she'd just been _good_ enough, Sasuke wouldn't have had to betray them all so many times. In a purely cerebral way, Sakura knew this wasn't true; in a purely cerebral way, she knew that letting herself be defined by someone else's opinion of her was a certain way to get hurt . . . but on a gut level, she hadn't been able to totally convince herself. It was like trying to talk oneself out of throwing up: it might work for a short while, but the battle most often proves futile.

As a medic, she knew what to do: purge the sickness, then medicate. Except for years on end, the sickness had refused to be purged.

But then there was Gaara, with his attention and his small smiles and company; with his disarming combination of strength and fragility; with how he made it clear he wanted to be a better person for her.

They'd _both_ needed healing, she decided. So if he wanted to become better for her, and she wanted to be a better person for him . . . _that_ wasn't sickness. It wasn't letting someone else define them. It wasn't chasing after some impossible ideal via a perpetual cycle of self-doubt and self-loathing and self-recrimination. It was growth.

Something in her chest loosened, something she hadn't realized was tight, and she smiled to herself as she turned to head towards her station. Strange, that she'd found a fairly functional relationship with someone as profoundly dysfunctional as Gaara.

Caught up in self-congratulation, she almost walked past the kunoichi attempting to give her wide berth: a girl with an impressively black eye and the sullen, slump-shouldered stride of someone who'd been properly taken to task. Sakura looked; the girl looked away.

She thought of Naruto, how he'd claimed allies among those he'd once beaten. She thought of how the girls she'd fought hadn't thought her capable of standing on her own. She remembered how Gaara'd told her he'd had to first fight those who'd been against him, then convince them they were really on the same side.

"Come on," Sakura said, then grabbed the girl's arm and started marching her towards the bathroom. "Let's get that taken care of." When her victim started to resist, Sakura shook her. "Calm _down_—I'm just trying to help."

In a few minutes she'd repaired the outward damage, and announced her success with, "There. It'll be red for a few hours, but the worst is gone."

The other girl examined herself in the mirror hesitantly, as if waiting for an illusion to fade. But Sakura'd done her work well; the bruise was gone. She knew what the Sand-nin felt by her expression: disbelief, a little fear, a little awe . . . but realized she didn't even know the girl's name.

"How'd you do that?"

"I can show you." Sakura let out a breath, then smiled and stuck out her hand. "Here, let's start over. I'm Sakura."


	18. Focus

I've been looking at this one for way too long . . .

**ooo**

Sakura told him about her little outreach that night, while seated at his side on the cool roof of his building. She didn't know if it'd worked or even changed anything—but she did have an actual, non-hostile conversation with the one girl, and she figured that was a start.

Gaara, on the other hand, had wasted another afternoon on mock- and semi-hostile correspondence with Leaf. As best he could gather, Naruto'd started to put things together: Sakura's absence; Sasuke's detailed research of family ceremonies; the muted, snappish interaction of council members at Tsunade's door; the flurry of back-and-forth messages to and from Sand. He might be dense at times, but Naruto wasn't stupid any more than Tsunade was dishonest. So Naruto'd gone to Tsunade . . . and Tsunade'd let him see the message scrolls.

"Oh," said Sakura. She hadn't actually seen what Gaara'd been sending, but couldn't imagine it'd been very light-hearted.

"The Hokage said he might be upset."

"_Oh,"_ Sakura said again, and wrung her hands.

"It'll be all right," Gaara said, and smiled up at the sky, relishing the thought of the coming battle. "What are you going to tell him when he gets here?"

"What I know, I guess. I don't want to be with Sasuke and I'm afraid someone at Leaf will try to force me into it." She winced. "It really doesn't sound like much when you put it that way, huh?"

"I don't think I'd put it that way."

"That's because _you_ understand." She shuffled a little closer; she hooked her arm through his, unfamiliar softness crowding against his triceps.

"I don't know if I'm seeing the bigger picture or looking at things through a limited focus," he confessed.

"Can't you do both at the same time?"

"I don't know."

"I wouldn't put it past you," she smiled, then paused. The limited focus; the offhanded comment he'd made that morning; the stories he'd told her about his family . . . Together, they were fabric for a pattern she'd be blind to not recognize.

"Hey," she said, and lay a hand on his arm. "I'm not her."

He froze—a beast spotted mid-stalk, an assassin caught in sudden light. "I know," he heard himself say, but his calmness was only an outward affect.

When had he given her such insight? When had she figured it out?

She'd seen the worst of him, he was certain; she'd seen the parts that even he couldn't dwell upon for very long . . . and still, she leaned closer.

"You know it here," she said, and poked him between the eyes. "You need to know it here, too."

Her hand against his chest, warm and dry; his fingertips against it, reveling.

"I can do that."

He could, now—because she'd seen him from every horrible angle, she _knew_ . . . even if some quiet, realistic part of him questioned just how much she knew, how much she'd deduced, how she'd react if she saw all the terrible twisted segments put together like macabre puzzle pieces.

_I can,_ he thought, and drowned that part of himself out.

And his hand curled around the back of her head, strands of pink hair slipping between his fingers, the two of them leaning closer so smoothly he couldn't have said who'd moved first; then her lips moving against his in a careful, bloodless kiss.

Then smiles, close and hesitant, gaining in ease as they realized yet again that they had nothing to fear from the other. Their fingers linked, they wandered along the darkened streets in the quiet, dead hours.

Their kiss was an affirmation, a suggestion that maybe, perhaps, there were some things he'd be capable of after all. Sakura saw the open door it presented and knew where it would lead, knew it with the certainty of stone, of solid and permanent things: she was going to end up in bed with him. But . . . She frowned to herself. But where would they go from there?

She had the sneaky, unpleasant feeling she'd been waiting for him to rescue her; that she'd expected, against all logic, to be swept off her feet in mimicry of a children's fairy tale.

She could have him snarling, him shielding her, him opening up to her and listening as she did the same . . . but she couldn't imagine him draping either of them in wealth like some snooty lordling, giving gallant speeches about her looks, slaying a—okay, so she could see him slaying an evil monster or two. But that'd be either for Sand or for kicks.

So what was she waiting for?

She told him how, as a young child, she'd watched a pair of chuunin playing keep-away. They'd been moving faster than she could follow, laughing, teasing each other; they'd been beautiful and wonderful, elated with themselves and each other, and she'd immediately known she wanted to be like them. But she's gotten older, been immersed in the problems and politics of a ninja's duties, and learned just how rare and precious those moments could be. She told him she worried about making the wrong decision; that a bad move here might cost her any hopes of a remotely peaceful life.

"That's how life goes, though," he replied. "If you don't step outside of your normal boundaries, you might not get hurt—but you'll never get what you really want."

"What are _your_ normal boundaries?"

They tended to involve not killing people. He hesitated, then rephrased his response. "Suffering the good-intentioned people who give me trouble."

"Nicer than making them suffer." Sakura grinned, and he once again mentally congratulated himself on his good taste.

He shared one of his more whimsical ideas with her: the comparison of Sand's shinobi forces, all of the hidden villages' shinobi, to the webs of blind spiders that lived in deep lightless places. The threads of some of their lives were long, others short, the joins chaotically haphazard—but cutting one strand would shake the entire structure.

"The web's purpose is still to snare and kill things, though," she said.

"I know."

She didn't flinch; instead she smiled at him as he brushed his knuckles against her cheek.

The next day he slipped through the gardens, the hospital, the medics' storage rooms, gathering what was necessary. Every ninja, regardless of gender or levels of murderous intent, learned about contraceptive recipes and techniques as soon as they reached puberty. When _he'd_ learned about them, sex had been conceptually similar to the ocean floor: he knew it existed, but hadn't a single reason to actually _care._

But now he had a reason. Now he had a fairly normal relationship with someone who'd seen half of the proverbial skeletons in his closet, guessed at the rest, and still wanted to spend time at his side. Now he was actually curious about what he'd been missing.

Now if he could only be sure he wouldn't have a flashback in the middle of the act; now if he could only be certain his body would go along with what his mind wanted it to do.

Instead of resting or meditating, he spent his spare time engrossed in fantasy. It didn't work. He wanted to imagine her reactions to his touch; instead he imagined the way she smiled at him on their walks. He wanted to imagine how she'd feel, smell, taste, but his knowledge of female anatomy was mainly patched together from the brief memories of the bodies of kunoichi he'd caught, just before he killed them.

He sat in his quarters, hands on his knees, and scowled at the wall. Just because he wanted to _try_ didn't mean he knew what he was doing, either. And he wanted to please her, not rut on her, fixated on conception. Like Sasuke, like—

Those thoughts were madness; he had to shake them.

He'd fallen into a habit: if something reminded him of his father, his mother, he went to find Sakura to reassure himself of her difference. But at the hospital, paired feminine laughter stopped him from just walking into the room.

He listened, then glided through the door silently to not disturb them. Sakura and Tomoko—one of the kunoichi she'd fought—were trading medics' horror stories.

"And then they always say it was an accident—that they slipped and fell and whatever the thing was just kind of ended up . . . well, _up there_—"

He didn't want to know. And when Sakura turned around and saw the look on his face, she assured him that he was right.

But then she'd taken a step back to make him the third player in their conversation, including him without hesitation even though he had nothing to add.

And she'd been right—he _hadn't_ wanted to know what they were talking about. Sakura laughed at his expression—then Tomoko stopped boggling at them and laughed at Sakura, and the two went into fits of giggles as Gaara sighed and decided that yes, he did feel old.

Halfway through inviting Sakura to dinner at his place he realized how close they were standing, and the other kunoichi's lack of protest. He took it as a good sign.

After he'd left, Sakura's companion turned to her with a resigned, sad smile. "I thought I'd seen every expression he has . . . but I've never seen him warm up like that before."

Sakura smiled and nodded and wondered if she'd just run into a different side of him. The Gaara they knew was ice-edged and nearly omnipotent, as alien as he was familiar. The Gaara she knew remained accessible, shatteringly human, with stray gray hairs and tiny lines forming at the corners of his mouth—lines that faded as he smiled and welcomed her into his quarters that night.

The Gaara they knew taught the students at Sand's academy with cool, unsettling seriousness: _These are the most delicate cartilage joins in the neck. This is how you break them. This is how you do it with one hand. If necessary, this is how you do it with your feet. _The Gaara they knew spoke and demonstrated and made no mention of how, by the time he was the students' age, he'd already forgotten the number of people he'd killed.

The Gaara she knew had admitted he'd never learned how to dance, then let her teach him on an empty public street, their feet moving in tandem to her whisper of, "One-and-two-and-one-and—"

The Gaara they knew could terrify them as easily as he terrified anyone who stood against his village; the Gaara she knew watched her yawn and check the time after their dinner together, then offered her his unused bed since she'd only be back in a few hours anyway.

She knew this was less than proper and would likely fuel even more rumors . . . but the sheets were clean and the mattress comfortable. If cuddling his clothing had helped her sleep easier, an entire room that smelled like him would be . . .

She woke to the sound of people talking about her. Sakura recognized Temari's voice; Gaara's, deeper, carried better. "She's sleeping here right now. I haven't touched her."

The siblings almost always knew the others' locations; like roving planets, each attuned to the other's gravitational field. Sakura lifted herself to an elbow and wondered if that made her a satellite.

In a few minutes Temari left and Gaara appeared in the doorway, watching her silently. There, he thought, was normalcy, waiting in his bed, receptive and warm . . . if he could only handle the contact.

"Things okay?" Sakura asked.

"She just wanted to make sure you were all right."

He sat beside her, his expression strangely blank; he posted an arm to her side and leaned over her, testing his reaction as gingerly as a poisoned trap. Sakura smiled up at him sleepily, knowing nothing of his inner turmoil, and reached up, cupping the back of his head, drawing him down to her.

Softness cushioned his cheek. Under his ear was the comforting double-thump of her heartbeat. Gaara wrapped an arm around her and waited. Aside from the knowledge that there was a soft, warm, interesting-smelling female in his arms . . .

There were some instances, he decided, where a limited focus could serve him very well. So if he let his attention fix on the immediate, here-and-now of their contact . . . If he put his mind to learning the difference between touching her and the half-formed fragments of a fantasy . . .

His hand moved against her side. Here was the curve of her waist; here the swell of her hipbone. He lifted his head from her shoulder to better see what he was doing, only to find her watching as well.

Up, and his fingers splayed against her stomach. She was taut and solid under his palm; he'd expected nothing else. His leg hooked around hers as he coiled, pulling himself up level with her. She reached for his face as if waking from a dream, her fingertips grazing against cheek and nose and lips and chin, and as her hand fell away he moved in to kiss her. Their kiss from the previous night had been an affirmation; this was a promise, sealed by their shared breath and his tongue against her upper lip.

His fingers glided upwards again, beginning a more intimate exploration, teasing her in delicate little spirals, and she gasped; she hadn't realized just how much she wanted him to touch her. As the kiss continued she realized she felt like she was standing on the edge of one of the buildings, the wind around her tugging her closer to the point where she'd lean too far and tumble away into a space where only he could catch her.

One of his legs fit between hers; the weight of his body as he leaned over her was simultaneously warm and comfortable and alarming. Her reasons for holding back wavered . . . But if she gave in here, she'd be binding herself to Sand, to him—and would be taking the first big step towards not returning to her home and family in Leaf.

"Gaara," she whispered, and cupped his face in her hands. "What'll this mean for us?"

_It means you're staying,_ he thought, but instead said, "I don't know."

"Me either." She smiled to take the edge off her words. "Don't you think we should?"

The corner of his mouth quirked upwards, and he leaned his forehead against hers. "Maybe."

She rolled him to his side; then, when he made no move to get up, she snuggled closer to him. "We can stay here for a little while, if you'd like."

It wasn't quite what either'd had in mind, but they found it worked well enough for the time being.


End file.
